was dressed as usual, and tucking his fiddle under his arm, led me up
to shake hands with his bride as if she were a queen. I cannot say
if she blushed. Certainly she received me with dignity: and then,
inverting a bucket that lay on the deck, seated herself; while Tubal
Cain and I sat down on the deck facing her, with our backs against
the bulwarks.

"It's just this, sir," explained the bridegroom, laying his fiddle
across his lap, and speaking as if in answer to a question: "it's
just this:--by trade you know me for a watchmaker, and for a Plymouth
Brother by conviction. All the week I'm bending over a counter, and
every Sabbath-day I speak in prayer-meeting what I hold, that life's
a dull pilgrimage to a better world. If you ask me, sir, to-night, I
ought to say the same. But a man may break out for once; and when so
well as on his honeymoon? For a week I've been a free heathen: for a
week I've been hiding here, living with the woman I love in the open
air; and night after night for a week Annie here has clothed herself
like a woman of fashion. Oh, my God! it has been a beautiful time--a
happy beautiful time that ends to-night!"


He set down the fiddle, crooked up a knee and clasped his hands round
it, looking at Annie.

"Annie, girl, what is it that we believe till to-morrow morning?
You believe--eh?--that 'tis a rare world, full of delights, and with
no ugliness in it?"

Annie nodded.