Trembling almost to fainting, the poor girl came to me, and I

received her into my arms, with something of a tremor also. I felt

the prize would be one that I should be very loath to lose; and

joy led to anxiety, and my anxiety rendered me nervous to a womanly

degree. But I did not lose my composure and when I had taken her

into my arms, I thought it would be only a prudent precaution to

turn the key in the outer dour, and leave it somewhere along the

highway. This I did, absolutely forgetting, that, in thus securing

myself against any sudden pursuit, I had also locked up my friend,

the Kentucky trader.

Fortune favored our movements. Our preparations had been properly

laid, and Edgerton had the divine in waiting. In less than half

an hour after leaving the house of her parents, Julia and myself

stood up to be married. Pale, feeble, sad--the poor girl, though she

felt no reluctance, and suffered not the most momentary remorse for

the steps she had taken, and was about to take, was yet necessarily

and naturally impressed with the solemnity and the doubts which

hung over the event. Young, timid, artless, apprehensive, she

was unsupported by those whom nature had appointed to watch over

and protect her; and though they had neglected, and would have

betrayed their trust, she yet could not but feel that there was an

incompleteness about the affair, which, not even the solemn accents

of the priest, the deep requisitions of those pledges which she

was called upon to make, and the evident conviction which she now

entertained, that what had been done was necessary to be done,

for her happiness, and even her life--could entirely remove. There

was an awful but sweet earnestness in the sad, intense glance of

entreaty, with which she regarded me when I made the final response.

Her large black eye dilated, even under the dewy suffusion of its

tears, as it seemed to say:-"It is to you now--to you alone--that I look for that protection,

that happiness which was denied where I had best right to look for

it. Ah! let me not look, let me not yield myself to you in vain!"

How imploring, yet how resigned was that glance of tears--love in

tears, yet love that trusted without fear! It was the embodiment of

innocence, struggling between hope and doubt, and only strengthened

for the future by the pure, sweet faith which grew out of their

conflict. I look back upon that scene, I recall that glance, with

a sinking of the heart which is full of terror and terrible reproach.

Ah! then, then, I had no fear, no thought, that I should see that

look, and others, more sad, more imploring still, and see them

without a corresponding faith and love! I little knew, in that

brief, blessed hour, how rapidly the blindness of the heart comes

on, even as the scale over the eyes--but such a scale as no surgeon's

knife can cut away.




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