Ducaine opened the letter. These were the words
"I shall not be with you in body when you and Mary are made one. But I shall be with you in the spirit, my dear friend. When you have made your communion and kept the feast come up with the Brethren to the mountain-top. There I will bless you. And now, farewell!"
"Therefore, if any man can show any just cause why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace."
"... I pronounce that they be man and wife together, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.... God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, bless, preserve, and keep you; the Lord mercifully look upon you, and so fill you with all spiritual benediction and grace, that ye may so live together in this life, that in the world to come ye may have life everlasting."
Arm in arm they went out from the little church, joined together, man and wife, for ever and a day—the goodly young man and the girl with the face of an angel.
The fiddlers who were waiting set up a merry tune, as, surrounded by their humble friends, they walked to the tithe-barn in which the marriage feast was to be.
As they all stood waiting till the signal to fall-to should be given, Thomas Ducaine took his wife's hand in his, bowed over it, and kissed it in gracious chivalry.