There was a wedding after all—the queerest, strangest, happiest wedding old Rockland county ever had recorded in its books. Bobbie was faint and weak from lack of food and rest, and like some strange wonder that had come into their midst, they hovered over and waited on him while he told of how for forty-eight hours he had ridden night and day to reach there in time. “Father is on the way,” he went on, while Sallie Tom held out “jis a little drap of suppin warm for him.” “I left him down by the old mill. He and Peter Black stopped for a few minutes to attend to something. It was after I left father that I met this gentleman,” and he nodded toward the Lieutenant, “and it’s lucky we’re both not out on the road. Both fired and missed, and something made me ask where he was going and who he was (Bobbie’s voice got a little husky), and I thought I’d better not fire again. And now when father comes you will marry me, Dorothy?” He asked the question before them all, looking steadfastly in her face, while he took the license out of his pocket and laid it on the table. “It came near being burnt up once,” he said, laughing. “It was a close call, but I told you this would save me,” and he held up the little Testament which was deeply dented in the middle. “The ball glanced off, and I wasn’t hurt. Now, mother, what are you crying for?”
When the big master came Sallie Tom got to work. The Rev. Dr. Miles couldn’t stay all night, but not until Christmas-Day would they be married. When the clock struck twelve the ceremony would take place, and poor Uncle Lias couldn’t make the fires quick enough in the big parlors, and Peter Black was called here and there, just as he had been a year ago.
“Bobbie must wear his uniform,” Dorothy said. She could marry him in nothing whose decorations would make her half so proud as would the torn and battered, the faded and worn old suit which told of honorable service. She whispered something to Bobbie, and the latter sprang to his feet. Anne and the Lieutenant were freezing away off in one of the big window seats, unconscious that they were cold, and evidently in a hot discussion. Bobbie walked over and saluted. “I believe you are to be Dorothy’s bridesmaid, Anne,” he said, looking at her provokingly and in a way she didn’t understand.
“Of course I am,” she answered, slipping off the seat, “and I’ve got to wear just what I have on. To my dying day it will be a mortification. It’s the only decent gown I’ve got, and all on account of this man and his friends,” and she turned with a merry laugh to the Lieutenant, now standing and slightly leaning against the window.
“I have come to ask him a favor,” answered Bobbie, turning toward him also. “Will you do me the honor to be my best man, Lieutenant Hardwicke?” and he held out his hand to the man in blue.
The other grasped it warmly. “Tell them who I am, for God’s sake, Bobbie. I am proud to be a ‘Yankee soldier,’ as she calls me, but tell them who else I am.” Anne had dropped into a chair, and Bobbie laughed at her look of blank astonishment.
“This is Dick Hardwicke, of Boston, Anne. He graduated two terms before I, and though he was older and we were not in the same classes, we were always good friends while at college.”
“And did you come to search for your college friend as you would for a thief?” she cried, her voice ringing with unutterable scorn, as she rose to her feet.
“Not a bit of it,” he answered, fearlessly. “In open fight we would have had to take the chances of this beastly war, but that the Robert F. Taylor, as our order read, was our Bobbie Tayloe, I no more suspected than you did my identity. Do you believe me?” She look at him a moment searchingly.