That day—the day before the wedding—all the gossiping tongues in Newlands were cackling from morning till night. Natt had been sent round the dale with invitations addressed to statesmen, their wives, sons and daughters. Parson Christian himself made the round of the homes of the poor.

"'The poor ye have always with you,' but not everywhere, and not often in Cana of Galilee," he said to Greta on setting out.

And the people of the highways and hedges were nothing loath to come in to the feast. "God luck to the weddiners!" they said, "and may they never lick a lean poddish-stick."

There was not much work done in the valley that day. The richest heiress on the country-side was about to be married to the richest statesman in the dale. On the eve of such an event it was labor enough to drop in at the Flying Horse and discuss mathematics. The general problem was one in simple addition, namely, how much Paul Ritson would be worth when he married Greta Lowther. And more than once that day twice two made a prodigious five.

The frost continued and the roads were crisp. Heavy rains had preceded the frost, and the river that ran down the middle of the valley had overflowed the meadows to the width of a wide carriage-way. This was now a road of ice five miles long, smooth as glass, and all but as straight as an arrow.

Abraham Strong, the carpenter, had been ordered to take the wheels off a disused landau and fix instead two keels of wood beneath the axles. This improvised sledge, after it had been shod in steel by the blacksmith, was to play a part in to-morrow's ceremony.

Early in the day Brother Peter was dispatched to the town to fetch Mr. Bonnithorne. The four miles' journey afoot seemed to him a bigger candle than the entire game was worth.

"Don't know as I see what the lass wants mair nor she's got," he told himself, grumpily, as he plodded along the road. "What call has she for a man? Hasn't she two of 'em as she is? I made her comfortable enough myself. But lasses are varra ficklesome."

Mr. Bonnithorne gathered enough from Brother Peter's "Don't know as there's not a wedding in t' wind," to infer what was afoot. Hugh Ritson was away from home, and his brother Paul was availing himself of his absence to have the marriage ceremony performed.

This was the inference with which Mr. Bonnithorne had walked from the town; but before reaching the vicarage he encountered Paul himself, who was even then on the way to his office. Few words passed between them. Indeed, the young dalesman was civil, and no more. He gave scant courtesy, but then he also gave something that was more substantial, and the severity of the lawyer's cynicism relaxed. Paul handed Mr. Bonnithorne, without comment, the deed drawn up in London. Mr. Bonnithorne glanced at it, pocketed it, and smiled. His sense of Paul's importance as a dangerous man sunk to nothing at that moment. They parted without more words.

Parson Christian got home toward evening, dead beaten with fatigue. He found the lawyer waiting for him. The marriage had been big in his eyes all day, and other affairs very little.

"So you shall give her away, Mr. Bonnithorne," he said, without superfluous preface of any kind.

"I—I?" said Mr. Bonnithorne, with elevated brows.

"Who has more right?" said the parson.

"Well, you know, you—you—"

"Me! Nay, I must marry them. It is you for the other duty."

"You see, Mr. Christian, if you think of it, I am—I am—"

"You are her father's old friend. There, let us look on it as settled."

Mr. Bonnithorne looked on it as awkward. "Well, to say the truth, Mr. Christian, I'd—I'd rather not."

The old parson lifted two astonished eyes, and gazed at Mr. Bonnithorne over the rims of his spectacles. The lawyer's uneasiness increased. Then Parson Christian remembered that only a little while ago Mr. Bonnithorne had offered reasons why Paul should not marry Greta. They were rather too secular, those same reasons, but no doubt they had appealed honestly to his mind as a friend of Greta's family.

"Paul and Greta are going away," said the parson.

"So I judged."

"They go to Victoria to farm there," continued the parson.

"On Greta's money," added the lawyer.

Parson Christian looked again over the rims of his spectacles. Then for once his frank and mellow face annexed a reflection of the curl on the lawyer's lip. "Do you know," he said, "it never once came into my simple old pate to ask which would find the dross and which the honest labor?"

Mr. Bonnithorne winced. The simple old pate could, on occasion, be more than a match for his own wise head.

"Seeing that I shall marry her, I think it will be expected that you should give her to her husband; but if you have an objection—"

"An objection?" Mr. Bonnithorne interrupted. "I don't know that my feeling is so serious as that."

"Then let us leave it there, and you'll decide in the morning," said Parson Christian.

So they left it there, and Mr. Bonnithorne, the dear friend of the family, made haste to the telegraph office and sent this telegram to Hugh Ritson in London: "They are to be married to-morrow. If you have anything imperative to say, write to-night, or come."

Paul and Greta saw each other only for five minutes that day amid the general hubbub; but their few words were pregnant with serious issues. Beneath the chorus of their hearts' joy there was an undersong of discord; and neither knew of the other's perplexity.

Greta was thinking of Hugh Ritson's mysterious threat. Whether or not Hugh had the power of preventing their marriage was a question of less consequence to Greta at this moment than the other question of whether or not she could tell Paul what Hugh had said. As the day wore on, her uncertainty became feverish. If she spoke, she must reveal—what hitherto she had partly hidden—the importunity and unbrotherly disloyalty of Hugh's love. She must also awaken fresh distress in Paul's mind, already overburdened with grief for the loss of his mother. Probably Paul would be powerless to interpret his brother's strange language. And if he should be puzzled, the more he must be pained. Perhaps Hugh Ritson's threat was nothing but the outburst of a distempered spirit—the noise of a bladder that is emptying itself. Still, Greta's nervousness increased; no reason, no sophistry could allay it. She felt like a blind man who knows by the current of air on his face that he has reached two street crossings, and can not decide which turn to take.

Paul, on his part, had a grave question to revolve. He was thinking whether it was the act of an honorable man to let Greta marry him in ignorance of the fact that he was not his father's legitimate son. Yet he could never tell her. The oath he had taken over his father's body must seal his lips forever. His mother's honor was wrapped up in that oath. Break the one, and the other was no longer inviolate. True, it would be to Greta, and Greta alone, and she and he were one. True, too, his mother was now dead to the world. But the oath was rigid:

"Never to reveal to any human soul, by word or deed, his act, or her shame." He had sworn it, and he must keep it. The conflict of emotion was terrible. Love was dragging him one way, and love the other. Honor said yes, and honor said no. His heart's first thought was to tell Greta everything, to keep nothing back from her whose heart's last thought was his. But the secret of his birth must lie as a dead and speechless thing within him.

If it was not the act of an honorable man to let Greta marry him in ignorance of his birth, there was only one escape from the dishonor—not to let her marry him at all. If they married, the oath must be kept. If the oath were kept, the marriage might be dishonored—it could not be the unreserved and complete union of soul with soul, heart with heart, mind with mind, which true marriage meant. It would be laying the treasure at the altar and keeping back part of the price.

Paul was not a man of subtle intellect, or perhaps such reflections would have troubled him too deeply. Love was above everything, and to give up Greta was impossible. If Circumstance was the evil genius of a man's life, should it be made the god of it also?

At all hazards Paul meant to marry Greta. And after all, what did this question of honor amount to? It was a mere phantasm. What did it matter to Greta whether he were high or basely born? Should he love her less or more? Would he be less or more worthy of her love? And how was his birth base? Not in God's eyes, for God had heard the voice of Hagar's son. Only in the eyes of the world. And what did that mean? It meant that whether birth was high or base depended one part on virtue and nine hundred and ninety-nine parts on money. Where had half the world's titled great ones sprung from? Not—like him—from their father and their father's fathers, but from a monarch's favorite.

Thus Paul reasoned with himself at this juncture. Whether he was wholly right or wholly wrong, or partly right and partly wrong, concerns us not at all. It was natural that such a man, in such a place, at such an hour, should decide once for all to say not a word to Greta. It was just as natural that his reticence should produce the long series of incidents still to be recorded.

Thus it was not a word was said between them of what lay nearest to the hearts of both.