Why should he have studied up in this line, when there was but one woman in all his little world?
As the form had not arrived, he had nothing in the world but his moral observations to use on this imposing occasion, and he was embarrassed as a man had never been embarrassed before.
He stood there trying hard to begin. He could hear the men breathe. The pretty little woman was troubled too. Her face was all the time held down, her eyes drooped, and she did not look up—did not look right or left or anywhere, but seemed to surrender herself to fate, to give herself away. Her soul seemed elsewhere, as if she sat on a high bank above all this, and was not of it or in it at all.
"Do you solemnly swear?"
The Judge had jerked himself together with an effort that made his joints fairly rattle. He hoisted his right hand in the air as he said this, and, having once broken ground, he went on—"Do you solemnly swear to love, and honor, and obey?"
Poor Limber Tim, who had just room enough behind the Judge to turn over, here became embarrassed through sympathy for the little red-faced magistrate, and of course flopped over, and began to write his name and the date, and make pictures on the wall, with a nervous rapidity proportionate to his embarrassment.
"Do you solemnly swear?"
It was very painful. The little man took down his lifted flagstaff to wipe his little bald head, and he could not get it up again, but stood there still and helpless.
You could hear the men breathe deeper than before as they leaned and listened with all their might to hear. They heard the water outside gurgling on down over the great boulders, over their dams, and on through the cañon. They heard the little brown wood-mice nibble and nibble at the bits of bacon-rind and old leather boots up in the loft above their heads, but that was all. At last the Judge revived, and began again in a voice that was full of desperation:
"Do you solemnly swear to love, and protect, and honor, and obey, till death do you part; and—"