"Oh, Uncle Reuben, he is my husband!" said Christie, in a voice choked with vehement sobs.
"Thy husband!" said Uncle Reuben, in a tone that plainly bespoke his fears that Christie had lost her reason.
"Oh! yes, yes, my husband! my long-lost husband! whom I never expected to meet again on this side of the grave. Oh, Uncle Reuben, you did not know I was married, but so it is! I never meant to tell you, but the surprise—the shock—forced it from me. Oh, Uncle Reuben, do not look as if you thought me insane; for indeed, indeed, I speak the truth." And again Christie's voice was lost in sobs, as she bowed her head on the cold breast before her, and thought how warmly and tumultuously it had once throbbed for her.
Uncle Reuben was not one to give way long to any emotion; so, with a look of intense surprise and perplexity, he recalled his scattered faculties, and once more approaching the bed, said, slowly:
"Well, if he is thy husband, thee is anxious, no doubt, for his recovery, and had better go away for the present, and let me attend to him and bring him to."
"Oh, Uncle Reuben, do you think he is dead?" said Christie, in a tone of piercing anguish.
"By no means, little one; he is only in a swoon at present, from which he will shortly recover. And there are no bones broken, either," added Uncle Reuben, after a short examination, "only this ugly cut in his head, which has bled so profusely, and which I must bind up now. We'll have to cut the hair off just round the temple, you see, to get at it. It's Heaven's mercy it wasn't half an inch lower, or he would have been a dead man now."
A convulsive shudder at the bare idea agitated the slender form of Christie; and she lifted the silky waves of dark hair with a fond superstition as they were severed, all matted with blood, from his head.
And thus, while Uncle Reuben sat down to bathe his temple and forehead with water, she took the cold hands in her own burning ones to chafe them, with her eyes still fixed, as if she could never remove them more, on that cold, white, handsome face, as still and fixed as though immovable in death, looking whiter still in contrast with the wet black hair.
"And so thee is a wife, little Christie," said Uncle Reuben, looking thoughtfully and wonderingly upon the two faces before him.