“Ah, I know Mr. Gaudylock,” answered Jacqueline, and gave the hunter both her hands.  “We all know and admire and want to be friends with Adam Gaudylock!”

The picture that she made in her youth and beauty and bridal raiment was a dazzling one.  Adam looked at her so fully and so long that she blushed a little.  She could not read the thought behind his blue eyes.  “You shall be my Queen if you like,” he said at last, and Jacqueline laughed, thinking his speech the woodsman’s attempt to say a pretty thing.

Rand drew forward with determination a small brown figure.  “Jacqueline, this is another good friend of mine—­Miss Lavinia Mocket, the sister of my law partner.—­Vinie, Vinie, you are shyer than a partridge!  You shan’t scuttle away until you have spoken to my wife!”

“Yeth, thir,” said Vinie, her hand in Jacqueline’s.  “I wish you well, ma’am.”

Rand and Adam laughed.  Jacqueline, with a sudden soft kindliness for the small flushed face and startled eyes, bent her flower-crowned head and kissed Vinie.  “Oh!” breathed Vinie.  “Yeth, yeth, Mith Jacqueline, I thertainly wish you well!”

“Where’s Tom?” asked Rand.  “Tom should be here—­” but Vinie had slipped from the ring about the bride.  Adam followed; Mr. Pincornet had already faded away.  More important folk claimed the attention of the newly wedded pair, and Mr. Mocket had not yet appeared when at last the gathering, bound for the wedding feast at Mrs. Selden’s, deserted the interior of the church and flowed out under the portico and down the steps to the churchyard and the coaches waiting in the road.  Lewis and Jacqueline Rand came down the path between the midsummer flowers.  They were at the gate when the sight and sound of a horse coming at a gallop along the road drew from Rand an exclamation.  “Tom Mocket—­and his horse in a lather!  There’s news of some kind—­”

It was so evident, when the horse and rider came to a stop before the church gate, that there was news of some kind, that the wedding guests, gentle and simple, left all talk and all employment to crowd the grassy space between the gate and the road and to demand enlightenment.  Mocket’s horse was spent, and Mocket’s face was fiery red and eager.  He gasped, and wiped his face with a great flowered handkerchief.  “What is it, man?” cried a dozen voices.

Mocket rose in his stirrups and looked the assemblage over.  “We’re all Republicans—­hip, hip, hurrah!  Eh, Lewis Rand, I’ve brought you a wedding gift!  The stage had just come in—­I got the news at the Eagle!  Hip, hip—­”

“Tom,” said Rand at his bridle rein, “you’ve been drinking.  Steady, man.  Now, what’s the matter?”

“A wedding gift! a wedding gift!” repeated Tom, taken with his own conceit.  “And I never was soberer, gentlemen, never ’pon honour!  Hip, hip, hurrah! we’re all good Republicans—­but you’ll never guess the news!—­The Creole’s dead!”

“No!” cried Rand.