her! On they went, however, and had glittered along about a third
of the aisle, when another stroke of the bell seemed to fill the
church with a visible gloom, dimming and obscuring the bright
pageant, till it shone forth again as from a mist.

This time the party wavered, stopped, and huddled closer
together, while a slight scream was heard from some of the
ladies, and a confused whispering among the gentlemen. Thus
tossing to and fro, they might have been fancifully compared to a
splendid bunch of flowers, suddenly shaken by a puff of wind,
which threatened to scatter the leaves of an old, brown, withered
rose, on the same stalk with two dewy buds,--such being the
emblem of the widow between her fair young bridemaids. But her
heroism was admirable. She had started with an irrepressible
shudder, as if the stroke of the bell had fallen directly on her
heart; then, recovering herself, while her attendants were yet in
dismay, she took the lead, and paced calmly up the aisle. The
bell continued to swing, strike, and vibrate, with the same
doleful regularity as when a corpse is on its way to the tomb.

"My young friends here have their nerves a little shaken," said
the widow, with a smile, to the clergyman at the altar. "But so
many weddings have been ushered in with the merriest peal of the
bells, and yet turned out unhappily, that I shall hope for better
fortune under such different auspices."

"Madam," answered the rector, in great perplexity, "this strange
occurrence brings to my mind a marriage sermon of the famous
Bishop Taylor, wherein he mingles so many thoughts of mortality
and future woe, that, to speak somewhat after his own rich style,