that she would have no more music, so the fiddlers were dismissed--and
the story did not lose in their telling when they got among the crowd.

It was a mournful bridal procession that now moved on towards the
church. The rain allowed of the bride and bridegroom hiding their
faces from the curiosity of the onlookers till they got inside; but
they felt that they were running the gauntlet, and they felt too that
their own friends were annoyed at being laughed at as part of such a
foolish procession.

The grave of the famous fiddler, Ole Haugen, lay close by the
church-door. Without saying much about it, the family had always
tended it, and a new head-board had been put up when the old one had
rotted away below. The upper part of it was in the shape of a wheel,
as Ole himself had desired. The grave was in a sunny spot, and was
thickly overgrown with wild flowers. Every churchgoer that had ever
stood by it had heard from some one or other how a botanist in
government pay, making a collection of the plants and flowers of the
valley and the mountains round about, had found flowers on that grave
that did not grow anywhere else in the neighbourhood. And the
peasants, who as a rule cared little about what they called "weeds,"
took pride in these particular ones--a pride mixed with curiosity and
even awe. Some of the flowers were remarkably beautiful. But as the
bridal pair passed the grave, Endrid, who was holding Randi's hand,
felt that she shivered; immediately she began to cry again, walked
crying into the church, and was led crying to her place. No bride
within the memory of man had made such an entrance into that church.

She felt as she sat there that all this was helping to confirm the
report that she had been sold. The thought of the shame she was