understood him, when he prayed that they and himself, and all of
mortal race, might be ready, as he trusted this young maiden had been,
for the dreadful hour that should snatch the veil from their faces.
The bearers went heavily forth and the mourners followed, saddening
all the street, with the dead before them and Mr. Hooper in his black
veil behind.

"Why do you look back?" said one in the procession to his partner.

"I had a fancy," replied she, "that the minister and the maiden's
spirit were walking hand in hand."

"And so had I at the same moment," said the other.

That night the handsomest couple in Milford village were to be joined
in wedlock. Though reckoned a melancholy man, Mr. Hooper had a placid
cheerfulness for such occasions which often excited a sympathetic
smile where livelier merriment would have been thrown away. There was
no quality of his disposition which made him more beloved than this.
The company at the wedding awaited his arrival with impatience,
trusting that the strange awe which had gathered over him throughout
the day would now be dispelled. But such was not the result. When Mr.
Hooper came, the first thing that their eyes rested on was the same
horrible black veil which had added deeper gloom to the funeral and
could portend nothing but evil to the wedding. Such was its immediate
effect on the guests that a cloud seemed to have rolled duskily from
beneath the black crape and dimmed the light of the candles. The
bridal pair stood up before the minister, but the bride's cold fingers
quivered in the tremulous hand of the bridegroom, and her death-like
paleness caused a whisper that the maiden who had been buried a few