Mr. Balfour had been written to, and would keep his promise to be present at the wedding, with Mrs. Balfour and the boys.  Sam Yates, at Jim’s request, had agreed to see to the preparation of an appropriate outfit for the bridegroom.  Such invitations had been given out as Miss Butterworth dictated, and the Snow family was in a flutter of expectation.  Presents of a humble and useful kind had been pouring in upon Miss Butterworth for days, until, indeed, she was quite overwhelmed.  It seemed as if the whole village were in a conspiracy of beneficence.

In a final conference with Mrs. Snow, Miss Butterworth said: 

“I don’t know at all how he is going to behave, and I’m not going to trouble myself about it; he shall do just as he pleases.  He has made his way with me, and if he is good enough for me, he is good enough for other people.  I’m not going to badger him into nice manners, and I’m going to be just as much amused with him as anybody is.  He isn’t like other people, and if he tries to act like other people, it will just spoil him.  If there’s anything that I do despise above board, it’s a woman trying to train a man who loves her.  If I were the man, I should hate her.”

CHAPTER XXII.

IN WHICH JIM GETS MARRIED, THE NEW HOTEL RECEIVES ITS MISTRESS, AND BENEDICT CONFERS A POWER OF ATTORNEY.

There was great commotion in the little Sevenoaks tavern.  It was Jim’s wedding morning, and on the previous evening there had been a sufficient number of arrivals to fill every room.  Mr. and Mrs. Balfour, with the two boys, had come in in the evening stage; Jim and Mr. Benedict had arrived from Number Nine.  Friends of Miss Butterworth from adjoining towns had come, so as to be ready for the ceremony of the morning.  Villagers had thronged the noisy bar-room until midnight, scanning and discussing the strangers, and speculating upon the event which had called them together.  Jim had moved among them, smiling, and returning their good-natured badinage with imperturbable coolness, so far as appearances went, though he acknowledged to Mr. Balfour that he felt very much as he did about his first moose.

“I took a good aim,” said he, “restin’ acrost a stump, but the stump was oneasy like; an’ then I blazed away, an’ when I obsarved the moose sprawlin’, I was twenty feet up a tree, with my gun in the snow; an’ if they don’t find me settin’ on the parson’s chimbly about nine o’clock to-morrer mornin’, it won’t be on account o’ my not bein’ skeered.”

But the wedding morning had arrived.  Jim had had an uneasy night, with imperfect sleep and preposterous dreams.  He had been pursuing game.  Sometimes it was a bear that attracted his chase, sometimes it was a deer, sometimes it was a moose, but all the time it was Miss Butterworth, flying and looking back, with robes and ribbons vanishing among the distant trees, until he shot and killed her, and then he woke in a great convulsion of despair, to hear the singing of the early birds, and to the realization of the fact that his days of bachelor life were counted.