After a little she rested her hands on his shoulders, half-clinging to him, half-repelling him, and he pressed his hands upon her cheeks, to be ready for the question he had read in her eyes.
"But," she faltered, "there are things I have promised to do for Aunt Sally; we shall have to wait a long time!"
"Not for Aunt Sally," he cried happily. "Here she is at the door now. I left her and John Ware at Dr. Wandless's."
"Well, well!" exclaimed Mrs. Owen, advancing into the room and throwing open her coat. "You said you meant to get back to the city in time to catch that limited for New York, and you haven't got much margin, Daniel, I can tell you that!"
It seemed to the people who heard of it afterward a most romantic marriage, that of Sylvia and Dan Harwood; but whatever view we may take of this, it was certainly of all weddings the simplest. They stood there before the mantel above which still hung the broken half of a ship's wheel. Mrs. Owen, very tall and gaunt, was at one side, and Dr. Wandless at the other; and old Mary, abashed and bewildered, looked on with dilated eyes and crossed herself at intervals.
John Ware drew a service book from his pocket, and his fingers trembled as he began. For none in the room, not even for Sylvia, had this hour deeper meaning than for the gray soldier. He read slowly, as though this were a new thing in the world, that a man and a woman had chosen to walk together to the end of their days. And once his voice broke. He who, in a hill country far away, had baptized this woman into the fold of Christ the Shepherd, wavered for an instant as he said:—
"Elizabeth, wilt thou have this man—"
Sylvia lifted her head. She had not expected this, nor had Dan; but Dr. Wandless had already stepped forward to give her in marriage, and as she repeated her name after the minister, she felt the warm, reassuring pressure of Dan's hand.
And so they went forth together from the little cottage by the campus where they had first met; nor may it have been wholly a fancy of Dr. Wandless's that the stars came out earlier that white, winter evening to add their blessing!