Words cannot depict the scene that ensued.

Blank amazement marked every face save one—that of the bridegroom, which was dark with wrath and hate.

For a minute no one moved or spoke.

Then two gentlemen found voice at once.

“Who are you, madam? And why do you come here in this unseemly manner to interrupt this service?” gravely inquired the officiating minister, addressing the stranger.

“What is the meaning of this outrageous conduct, Col. Anglesea? Who is this woman?” sternly demanded the bride’s father of the bridegroom.

Every man, woman and child in the congregation arose, stretched their necks and leaned forward to hear and see what was going on.

“The woman is a lunatic escaped from some madhouse, I suppose. She had best be arrested. Where are your constables?” growled the bridegroom, drawing the arm of his bride within his own and attempting to leave the altar.

“Stop that man!” cried the strange woman. “If you care for that girl’s honor and good name, stop that man!” she vehemently repeated, placing herself directly in the path of the enraged bridegroom and his half-stupefied bride.

“Begone, woman! You are mad! Will some one take this maniac in custody?” fiercely demanded Anglesea, roughly pushing the stranger aside, and dragging Odalite after him, and trying to force his way down the narrow aisle, which was now fast filling up with the eager, wondering people from the pews.

“One moment, if you please, sir. Let me relieve you of my daughter, until this interruption shall be explained,” said Mr. Force, taking the hand of his child, to draw her away.

But the bridegroom’s arm tightened around his prey, as he haughtily replied:

“Pardon me, sir! You have no authority over Mrs. Anglesea. She is my wife, and under my protection. Let me pass.”

“Not if I know it—you don’t pass here! Not with that innocent girl on your arm, you don’t! Your wife, is she? I see that, and go one better! And that’s me! A man can’t have two wives, can he, Mr. Parson? This ain’t Utah, nor yet Salt Lake City, be it?”

“I think, Col. Anglesea,” slowly began the rector——but the bridegroom cut him short:

“Your interference is not required here, reverend sir. Your ministry is completed. The marriage ceremony is finished. I hold my wife on my arm.”

“Then this is a Mormon settlement, and a man can marry as many wives as he pleases, eh, gentlemen?” inquired the strange woman, looking around.

“Good friends! Pray let us pass!” the colonel expostulated, trying to elbow his way through the excited crowd that filled up the aisle, and seemed to wait with suspended breath the issue of the scene.

Two voices answered at once:

“No, sir. I think not. Mr. Force has asked for his daughter until this matter can be investigated,” said Thomas Grandiere.

“Will you release the lady, at her father’s demand, and save us the discredit of using violence in this sacred place?” inquired William Elk.

“Oh, my Lord, there’ll be a fight!” exclaimed a voice from the crowd.

“Will some one be kind enough to take this mad woman in custody?” exclaimed Anglesea, beside himself with fear, shame and wrath.

“In custody, is it? If anybody is taken in custody, it is that man there! Yes, it is you I am talking about! It’s you, for bigamy! I wish I had got a warrant out and fetched a couple of bailiffs to do it, too! Why don’t you let this girl go? You might’s well do it first as last. You’ll have to do it, you know!” said the woman.

“Will you give me my daughter, Col. Anglesea?” quietly questioned Abel Force.

“No, I will not give you my wife!” fiercely retorted the bridegroom.

But at this moment the two sturdy Maryland farmers came up on either side of the man, and, each taking a firm grip of his arms, with gentle strength, released the half-swooning bride, who immediately dropped upon the bosom of her father.

“I shall hold every man here to a strict account for this outrage!” fiercely hissed the furious bridegroom.

“Quite right, sir! We will be at your service at any time,” said William Elk.

Abel Force bore his unfortunate daughter off to the side pews, where her mother, her sisters and her governess had retreated, and where they sat, confounded and overwhelmed by all that had passed.

“Take her, Elfrida,” he said, lifting the girl and laying her in the arms of her mother. “And do not allow that man to come near her. He has behaved badly in not giving her up, on my demand, until we can inquire into this matter. It may be that this strange woman is a lunatic, or an impostor. We shall see.”

Mrs. Force made no reply. She could not speak. She took her daughter on her lap, as if Odalite had been a young child, and laid the pale cheek of the girl on her bosom, and motioned her husband to return to the group around the bridegroom.

“Odalite, darling, do not grieve. No wrong of any sort shall be done you. You have your father and your mother, dear, and our faithful love shall never leave you,” said Abel Force, as he stooped and kissed his daughter’s pale forehead, and walked away.

But Odalite made no sign.

“And you have us, darling, darling sister,” said Elva, taking up and kissing one cold hand.

“And you have Le, as true as steel!” put in Wynnette.

“And, oh, I knew! I knew something was going to happen to stop it all! I didn’t know whether it was going to be a forbidding of the banns, or an apoplectic fit, or an earthquake, but I knew something would happen,” said Elva, taking the bride’s other hand.

“‘Some outlet through thunder and lightning,’” added Wynnette.

“Oh, why don’t you speak? Why don’t you say something, Odalite?” inquired Elva.

But Odalite gave no sign. She seemed stupefied, benumbed.

“Let your sister alone, my dears. Don’t disturb her,” said Miss Meeke.

Elfrida Force said nothing. She only recognized in this lethargy the merciful effects of the drug she had administered to her suffering daughter that morning.

Meanwhile, the scene before the chancel was becoming more exciting.

Col. Anglesea, furious, defiant, aggressive, but held in check by the surroundings; Abel Force, deeply offended, but self-controlled and dignified; Thomas Grandiere, dark, gloomy and determined; William Elk, red, fiery and threatening; and the strange woman composed, sarcastic and triumphant—formed a group around which the crowd assembled in the church were pressing as closely as possible.

“How dared you come here to make this scene?” fiercely demanded Anglesea.

“How ‘dared’ I? Humph! I like that! Do you think I’m afeared of you? When I have got the whip hand of you, too? I came here to take a hand in this here little game o’ your’n! And I guess it’s my deal now! And I rayther guess as how I shall turn up the little joker! We’ll see presently!” laughed the woman.

Then, turning to the others, she said:

“Gentlemen, I came here this morning not to make a muss, but to prevent that roaring lion there—who is always going about the world seeking whom he may devour—from gobbling up that innocent lamb of a young girl; and I mean to stay here until I do prevent it. Yes! I’m talking about you, you beast!” she exclaimed, suddenly turning upon Anglesea. “And you better not show your ugly mug down in Wild Cats’ Gulch, if you don’t want to be stood on your head and druv down into the ground like a post, and buried alive! The boys are piping hot after you, they are, I tell you! It was them that put up a pile to send me on here after you!”

The woman was handsome, but short and stout, and, like Hamlet, “scant o’ breath.” She had talked herself out of wind for the moment.

Anglesea seized the opportunity, controlled his temper by an effort, turned to the gentlemen near him, and said:

“Friends, if that woman can be kept quiet for five minutes, I will answer, to the satisfaction of all here present—though I consider it an outrage that I should be compelled to answer one who ought rather to be arrested and sent off to prison for a most flagrant breach of the peace! Still, if she can keep quiet, I will do so.”

“All right, old rooster!” laughed the woman. “It is your play now, and I give you your turn! Down with your best card!”

“Neighbors,” continued Col. Anglesea, fully controlling himself, and falling into that confidential tone which he had always found so effectual—“neighbors, I call upon you, in common justice to me, to use your reason and judgment in this matter. You see this woman who has brought forward this most absurd, preposterous, and, I must say, humiliating claim to be my wife. For it is most humiliating, indeed, that any of you should have the faintest shadow of a suspicion that she may be telling the truth. Why, gentlemen, I am from England. She says she is from California. I never was in California in all the days of my life. I never set eyes on this woman before this hour. She is no more my wife than she is the empress of India. I call upon you to look at her, and ask yourselves if it is at all likely or possible that she could, under any circumstances, be—what she claims to be. You see her appearance; you see her conduct; you hear her speech; is it likely—is it possible—that I could have married such a person? You see the absurdity of the thing. No, gentlemen; this person is a lunatic, laboring under some fantastic hallucination, or she is an impostor, conspiring, with others, to blackmail me. I demand, in the name of justice, that she be arrested and sent to prison for her flagrant breach of the peace in her outrageous assault upon me this morning.”

The colonel, who had completely mastered his emotions, spoke with such candor, judgment and authority that the men present whispered together, and seemed almost inclined to think that they had committed a shameful indiscretion in suspecting so gallant an officer and so perfect a gentleman of any impropriety, on the mere word of a strange woman, who was certainly not a lady.

The stranger saw the tide of sentiment, or of opinion, turning, and her black eyes sparkled, her blooming cheeks glowed and her red lips wreathed in a mocking smile, as she said:

“I declare! If you haven’t played the right bower! And you have very nearly took the trick, only for my little joker. Here it is, gentlemen! See me take this trick! Here! Here’s the joker!”

And, with these words, she took a folded parchment from her pocket, and handed it to the rector.