But alas! on the wedding day the rain poured hard.  The players had to wrap up their fiddles as soon as they had played the bridal party away from the farm, and they did not take them out again till they came within sound of the church-bells.  Then a boy had to stand up at the back of the cart and hold an umbrella over them, and below it they sat huddled together and sawed away.  The March did not sound like itself in such weather, naturally enough, nor was it a very merry-looking bridal procession that followed.  The bridegroom sat with the high bridegroom’s hat between his legs and a sou’-wester on his head; he had on a great fur coat, and he held an umbrella over the bride, who, with one shawl on the top of another, to protect the bridal crown and the rest of her finery, looked more like a wet hayrick than a human being.  On they came, carriage after carriage, the men dripping, the women hidden away under their wrappings.  It looked like a sort of bewitched procession, in which one could not recognise a single face; for there was not a face to be seen, nothing but huddled-up heaps of wool or fur.  A laugh broke out among the specially large crowd gathered at the church on account of the great wedding.  At first it was stifled, but it grew louder with each carriage that drove up.  At the large house where the procession was to alight and the dresses were to be arranged a little for going into church, a hay-cart had been drawn out of the way, into the corner formed by the porch.  Mounted on it stood a pedlar, a joking fellow, Aslak by name.  Just as the bride was lifted down he called:  “Devil take me if Ole Haugen’s Bridal March is any good to-day!”

He said no more, but that was plenty.  The crowd laughed, and though many of them tried not to let it be seen that they were laughing, it was clearly felt what all were thinking and trying to hide.

When they took off the bride’s shawls they saw that she was as white as a sheet.  She began to cry, tried to laugh, cried again—­and then all at once the feeling came over her that she could not go into the church.  Amidst great excitement she was laid on a bed in a quiet room, for such a violent fit of crying had seized her that they were much alarmed.  Her good parents stood beside the bed, and when she begged them to let her go back, they said that she might do just as she liked.  Then her eyes fell on Endrid.  Any one so utterly miserable and helpless she had never seen before; and beside him stood his mother, silent and motionless, with the tears running down her face and her eyes fixed on Randi’s.  Then Randi raised herself on her elbow and looked straight in front of her for a little, still sobbing after the fit of crying.  “No, no,!” she said, “I’m going to church.”  Once more she lay back and cried for a little, and then she got up.  She said that she would have no more music, so the fiddlers were dismissed—­and the story did not lose in their telling when they got among the crowd.