“But—­”

“I’ve a note to hand to each of ’ee.  Better save your breath till you’ve read ’em.”

He delivered the two notes, and stood, tapping a toe on the tiles, in the bridegroom’s place on the right of the chancel-rails.

“Damnation!”

“Mr. Tresidder,” interrupted the parson, “I like a man to swear off his rage if he’s upset, but I can’t allow it in the church.”

“I don’t care if you do or you don’t.”

“Then do it, and I’ll kick you out with this very boot.”

The farmer’s face was purple, and big veins stood out by his temples.

“I’ve been cheated,” he growled.  Zeb, who had kept his eyes on Ruby, stepped quickly towards her.  First picking up the paper that had drifted to the pavement, he crushed it into his pocket.  He then took her hand.  It was cold and damp.

“Parson, will ’ee marry us up, please?”

“You haven’t asked if she’ll have you.”

“No, an’ I don’t mean to.  I didn’t come to ax questions—­that’s your business—­but to answer.”

“Will you marry this man?” demanded the parson, turning to Ruby.

Zeb’s hand still enclosed hers, and she felt she was caught and held for life.  Her eyes fluttered up to her lover’s face, and found it inexorable.

“Yes,” she gasped out, as if the word had been suffocating her.  And with the word came a rush of tears—­helpless, but not altogether unhappy.

“Dry your eyes,” said Parson Babbage, after waiting a minute; “we must be quick about it.”

So it happened that the threatened shal-lal came to nothing.  Susan Jago, the old woman who swept the church, discovered its forgotten apparatus scattered beneath the pews on the following Saturday, and cleared it out, to the amount (she averred) of two cart-loads.  She tossed it, bit by bit, over the west wall of the churchyard, where in time it became a mound, covered high with sting-nettles.  If you poke among these nettles with your walking-stick, the odds are that you turn up a scrap of rusty iron.  But there exists more explicit testimony to Zeb’s wedding within the church—­and within the churchyard, too, where he and Ruby have rested this many a year.

Though the bubble of Farmer Tresidder’s dreams was pricked that day, there was feasting at Sheba until late in the evening.  Nor until eleven did the bride and bridegroom start off, arm in arm, to walk to their new home.  Before them, at a considerable distance, went the players and singers—­a black blur on the moonlit road; and very crisply their music rang out beneath a sky scattered with cloud and stars.  All their songs were simple carols of the country, and the burden of them was but the joy of man at Christ’s nativity; but the young man and maid who walked behind were well pleased.

“Now then,” cried the voice of Old Zeb, “lads an’ lasses all together an’ wi’ a will—­”

     All under the leaves, an the leaves o’ life,
      I met wi’ virgins seven,
     An’ one o’ them was Mary mild,
      Our Lord’s mother of Heaven.