III.

Ring, ring, ring, broke forth the chimes on the frosty midday air.  Not midnight, you perceive, but midday, for the church clock had just given forth its twelve strokes.  Another round of the dial, and the old year would have departed into the womb of the past.

Bowling along the smooth turnpike road which skirted the churchyard on one side came a gig containing a gentleman; a tall, slender, frank-looking young man, with a fair face and the pleasantest blue eyes ever seen.  He wore a white top-coat, the fashion then, and was driving rapidly in the direction of Leet Hall; but when the chimes burst forth he pulled up abruptly.

“Why, what in the world?—­” he began—­and then sat still listening to the sweet strains of “The Bay of Biscay.”  The day, though in mid-winter, was bright and beautiful, and the golden sunlight, shining from the dark-blue sky, played on the young man’s golden hair.

“Have they mistaken midday for midnight?” he continued, as the chimes played out their tune and died away on the air.  “What’s the meaning of it?”

He, Harry Carradyne, was not the only one to ask this.  No human being in and about Church Leet, save Captain Monk and they who executed his orders, knew that he had decreed that the chimes should play that day at midday.  Why did he do it?  What could his motive be?  Surely not that they should, by playing (according to Mrs. Carradyne’s theory), inaugurate ill-luck for Eliza!  At the moment they began to play she was coming out of church on Mr. Hamlyn’s arm, having left her maiden name behind her.

A few paces more, for he was driving gently on now, and Harry pulled up again, in surprise, as before, for the front of the church was now in view.  Lots of spectators, gentle and simple, stood about, and a handsome chariot, with four post horses and a great coat-of-arms emblazoned on its panels, waited at the church gate.

“It must be a wedding!” decided Harry.

The next moment the chariot was in motion; was soon about to pass him, the bride and bridegroom inside it.  A very dark but good-looking man, with an air of command in his face, he, but a stranger to Harry; she, Eliza.  She wore a grey silk dress, a white bonnet, with orange blossoms and a veil, which was quite the fashionable wedding attire of the day.  Her head was turned, nodding its farewells yet to the crowd, and she did not see her cousin as the chariot swept by.

“Dear me!” he exclaimed, mentally.  “I wonder who she has married?”

Staying quietly where he was until the spectators should have dispersed, whose way led them mostly in opposite directions, Harry next saw the clerk come out of the church by the small vestry door, lock it and cross over to the stile; which brought him out close to the gig.

“Why, my heart alive!” he exclaimed.  “Is it Captain Carradyne?”

“That’s near enough,” said Harry, who knew the title was accorded him by the rustic natives of Church Leet, as he bent down with his sunny smile to shake the old clerk’s hand.  “You are hearty as ever, I see, John.  And so you have had a wedding here?”