Her people did as she expected. She was threatened with banishment from
heart and home--with disinheritance; but she pursued her course; and the
only person who stood with her and Jim at the altar was John Appleton,
who would not be denied, and who had such a half-hour with Jim before
the ceremony as neither of them forgot in the years that the locust ate
thereafter. And, standing at the altar, Jim's eyes were still wet, with
new resolves in his heart and a being at his side meant for the best man
in the world. As he knelt beside her, awaiting the benediction, a sudden
sense of the enormity of this act came upon him, and for her sake he
would have drawn back then, had it not been too late. He realised that
it was a crime to put this young, beautiful life in peril; that his own
life was a poor, contemptible thing, and that he had been possessed of
the egotism of the selfish and the young.
But the thing was done, and a new life was begun. Before they were
launched upon it, however, before society had fully grasped the
sensation, or they had left upon their journey to northern Canada, where
Sally intended they should work out their problem and make their home,
far and free from all old associations, a curious thing happened.
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