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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, he seems to hang the
bridal-chamber in black and cut the wedding-garment out of a
coffin-pall. And it has been the custom of divers nations to infuse
something of sadness into their marriage ceremonies, so to keep death
in mind while contracting that engagement which is life's chiefest
business. Thus we may draw a sad but profitable moral from this
funeral-knell."
    But, though the clergyman might have given his moral even a keener
point, he did not fail to despatch an attendant to inquire into the
mystery and stop those sounds so dismally appropriate to such a
marriage. A brief space elapsed, during which the silence was broken
only by whispers and a few suppressed titterings among the
wedding-party and the spectators, who after the first shock were
disposed to draw an ill-natured merriment from the affair. The young
have less charity for aged follies than the old for those of youth.
The widow's glance was observed to wander for an instant toward a
window of the church, as if searching for the time-worn marble that
she had dedicated to her first husband; then her eyelids dropped over
their faded orbs and her thoughts were drawn irresistibly to another
grave. Two buried men with a voice at her ear and a cry afar off were
calling her to lie down beside them. Perhaps, with momentary truth of
feeling, she thought how much happier had been her fate if, after
years of bliss, the bell were now tolling for her funeral and she were
followed to the grave by the old affection of her earliest lover, long
her husband. But why had she returned to him when their cold hearts
shrank from each other's embrace?
    Still the death-bell tolled so mournfully that the sunshine seemed to
fade in the air. A whisper, communicated from those who stood nearest
the windows, now spread through the church: a hearse with a train of
several coaches was creeping along the street, conveying some dead man
to the churchyard, while the bride awaited a living one at the altar.
Immediately after, the footsteps of the bridegroom and his friends
were heard at the door. The widow looked down the aisle and clenched
the arm of one of her bridemaids in her bony hand with such
unconscious violence that the fair girl trembled.
    "You frighten me, my dear madam," cried she. "For heaven's sake, what
is the matter?"
    "Nothing, my dear—nothing," said the widow; then, whispering close to
her ear, "There is a foolish fancy that I cannot get rid of. I am
expecting my bridegroom to come into the church with my two first
husbands for groomsmen."
    "Look! look!" screamed the bridemaid. "What is here? The funeral!"
    As she spoke a dark procession paced into the church. First came an
old man and woman, like chief mourners at a funeral, attired from head
to foot in the deepest black, all but their pale features and hoary
hair, he leaning on a staff and supporting her decrepit form with his
nerveless arm. Behind appeared another and another pair, as aged, as
black and mournful as the first. As they drew near the widow
recognized in every face some trait of former friends long forgotten,
but now returning as if from their old graves to warn her to prepare a
shroud, or, with purpose almost as unwelcome, to exhibit their
wrinkles and infirmity and claim her as their companion by the tokens
of her own decay. Many a merry night had she danced with them in
youth, and now in joyless age she felt that some withered partner
should request her hand and all unite in a dance of death to the music
of the funeral-bell.
    While these aged mourners were passing up the aisle it was observed
that from pew to pew the spectators shuddered with irrepressible awe
as some object hitherto concealed by the intervening figures came full
in sight. Many