"Go in, Lizzī," said Gill. "We'll have a light as soon as the door is shut. If the church was lit up, somebody would see us go in, and come to peep to see what we was doin'."
She stepped into the close darkness. Gill followed, and Jim shut the door. Lizzī gave a little start when she heard the click of the latch, and a shiver ran over her. She was not frightened, only realizing that the door of her maiden life was closed behind her.
Squire Harker lighted two candles, and Lizzī's eyes blinked in the yellow light but soon they were able to pierce the semi-darkness, and to her surprise she could discover no preacher. She had thought him part of the romance. To no plan of Gill's had she objected after consenting to a secret marriage, but she had never dreamed otherwise than that the ceremony would be performed by a clergyman. When she saw Squire Harker, she supposed, because he was sexton, Gill had taken him into confidence and he was present because of his duties at the church, putting out the lights and locking it up.
Gill seemed as much astounded as she that there was no preacher present, and asked rather sharply why he had gone. Squire Harker replied that the preacher had been detained at the other end of the circuit by quarterly meeting.
"It's too confounded bad!" said Gill, angrily.
"It's bad luck to put off a weddin'," said Lizzī, disappointed.
"I think so, too," Gill remarked, and then asked, as if the idea had just struck him:
"Why not be married by the Squire?"
Lizzī, dressed in her best, demurred. She thought a church-wedding should be conducted by a preacher.
"A marriage ceremony performed by a Justice of the Peace is as binding and respectable as any churchman's," Gill urged.