Reverdy left off the work on my new house to help me repair the hut.  We had to make a hearth.  For this I found stones by the brook.  We stopped the chinks between the logs with heavy, tough clay.  We mended the holes in the roof.  We repaired the floor.  I bought beds and bedding, utensils for cooking, a rifle, an ax, and some other tools.  I stocked the house with provisions.  And in a week I was installed, listening at night to the cry of the wild animals, wolves and foxes and owls; and the song of late whippoorwills when an access of lingering summer warmed the midnights.  I chopped my own wood.  I killed quails and squirrels, and roasted them.  I tried my hand at making cornbread.  And I awoke in the delicious mornings, exuberant and happy.  Zoe had not come to me yet, for she was staying on at Mrs. Spurgeon’s until Sarah was married.  And at last the wedding was celebrated.

I shall never forget that night.  It was unlike anything of which I had ever heard.  The town minister performed the ceremony.  Mr. and Mrs. Sturtevant were present.  Douglas had been invited; but whether he failed to get the message, or whether his new duties of teaching at Winchester prevented him from coming I do not know.  We missed him greatly.  An emergency arose in which his courage and gift of speech might have been of use.  I can imagine how he would have handled the crowd that assembled outside while the wedding was in progress.  In short, we were treated to a shivaree, or charivari.

No sooner had the clergyman pronounced the final words than the most unearthly noise broke loose right at the door.  There was the sound of tin pans, kettles, horns, drums; and this pandemonium was punctuated by the firing of shots and the throwing of stones at the door and gravel upon the window panes.  Sarah, already flushed from excitement, took on an expression of alarm.  I thought that we had been attacked by a band of Indians bent upon massacre.  The clergyman, however, smiled.  And Reverdy left the side of his bride and went to the door.

He flung it open.  And there burst upon my vision the wildest assemblage of faces I had ever seen.  Some were blacked to resemble the negro.  Some were painted to look like the Indian on the warpath.  They were dressed fantastically, in a variety of colors, with feathers in their hair or hats or coon caps.  They leered, grinned from ear to ear.  They yelled, and again began to beat their pans and kettles and to fire their rifles.  Sarah put her fingers to her lips in a gesture of terror, of violated privacy.  But after all this was but the frontier’s hymeneal chant, the festivities of the uninvited wedding guests.  To quiet them it was necessary to ask them to partake of the wedding delicacies.