Mary led her friend to one side, and the two girls held a little whispered consultation together, from which they returned blushing, but apparently resigned, for each placed herself beside her lover. Then the two couples ranged themselves in order before the judge, who, dropping his jocose manner, and with the gravity befitting so solemn a ceremonial as that of uniting two human lives "until death does them part," proceeded to make the lovers husbands and wives.
Then the judge resumed his jovial mood, and claimed as his fees the first kiss from each of the brides, and Mr. Holden and Mr. Merriwether followed suit, and Mr. Dunn was very certain not to let himself be forgotten when any such fun as that was going on. There was a great deal of hand-shaking, and expression of kind thoughts and good wishes all around. And amid all this happiness nobody noticed for some little time that the man, whom Mr. Holden had seen bowed over the prosecutor's table, had arisen, come forward, and was standing in the door. A weak, trembling old man he was, with thin, deeply furrowed face, and a sad, weary look in his eyes. It was Peter Van Deust.
"I suppose," said he, speaking in a slow, meditative way, and with a weak, quavering voice, "that I have no right to come here as a kill-joy among you. Love and youth were done with me long ago. The first I drove from me, and the second left me. I can no more call back one than the other, now. If Jacob were alive to-day, he'd be more at home among you than I am."
He paused a moment, sighed deeply, passed a tremulous hand over his eyes, that were full of tears, and continued:
"But I feel as if I ought to speak to you, to two of you at least, and—beg your forgiveness. I erred, and I'm sorry. I ain't what I used to be; my head's failing me, a little, sometimes, I guess. But they've got the right man now, haven't they? They've got him at last! And they'll hang him, won't they?"
His voice was becoming momentarily more shrill, and his manner more excited. Mr. Holden took his hand with a gentle, sympathetic pressure that seemed to recall him to himself, and in a lower tone, half-choked by a sob, the poor old man exclaimed:
"Oh, you don't know how I miss Jacob! I didn't know how much he was to me, how much we had grown together, until I lost him! He was so good, so kind! Ah! If I had been more like him, people would feel for me now more than they do. But it has taken me all my life to learn that love is better than gold."
Sadly and slowly he turned and moved away, through the deserted court-room and the crowded street—lonely alike in both—to his desolate home, from which, thereafter, he was seldom seen abroad. But the lesson that it had taken him all his life to learn, he did not forget; for, when they laid him down by Jacob's dust—ere again the trailing arbutus put forth its fragrant blossoms beneath the dead leaves of the forest—and read his will, they found that he had left all he possessed to Mary Wallace, "for the sake of the kindly love my dear brother Jacob bore for her in memory of her mother."
What need can be to say the rest? how justice laid her heavy hand upon profligate young Silas Thatcher, and his doom was that his father had foretold; how Dorn entered into partnership with Mr. Merriwether, who proved his staunch and life-long friend; how faithful Lem Pawlett flourished, and how happy Ruth and Mary were. The interest of our story is done. Even justice, good deeds, calm joys, and placid lives are tame to tell.
THE END.