in the open air. They were distant relatives, sprung from a stock once
wealthy, but of late years so poverty-stricken, that David had not a
penny to pay the marriage fee, if Esther should consent to wed. The
seat they had chosen was in an open grove of elm and walnut trees, at a
right angle of the road; a spring of diamond water just bubbled into the
moonlight beside them, and then whimpered away through the bushes and
long grass, in search of a neighboring millstream. The nearest house
(situate within twenty yards of them, and the residence of their great-
grandfather in his lifetime) was a venerable old edifice, crowned with
many high and narrow peaks, all overrun by innumerable creeping plants,
which hung curling about the roof like a nice young wig on an elderly
gentleman's head. Opposite to this establishment was a tavern, with a
well and horse-trough before it, and a low green bank running along the
left side of the door. Thence, the road went onward, curving scarce
perceptibly, through the village, divided in the midst by a narrow
lane of verdure, and bounded on each side by a grassy strip of twice its
own breadth. The houses had generally an odd look. Here, the moonlight
tried to get a glimpse of one, a rough old heap of ponderous timber,
which, ashamed of its dilapidated aspect, was hiding behind a great
thick tree; the lower story of the next had sunk almost under ground, as
if the poor little house were a-weary of the world, and retiring into
the seclusion of its own cellar; farther on stood one of the few recent
structures, thrusting its painted face conspicuously into the street,
with an evident idea that it was the fairest thing there. About midway
in the village was a grist-mill, partly concealed by the descent of the
ground towards the stream which turned its wheel. At the southern
extremity, just so far distant that the window-paces dazzled into each
other, rose the meeting-house, a dingy old barn-like building, with an
enormously disproportioned steeple sticking up straight into heaven, as
high as the Tower of Babel, and the cause of nearly as much confusion in