They shall be blessed exceedingly, their store
Grow daily, weekly more and more,
And peace so multiply around,
Their very hearth seems holy ground.
Mary Howitt
The marriage of Capitola and of Herbert and that of Clara and of
Traverse was fixed to take place upon the first of August, which was
the twenty-first birthday of the doctor's daughter, and also the
twenty-fifth anniversary of the wedding of Ira Warfield and Marah
Rocke.
German husbands and wives have a beautiful custom of keeping the
twenty-fifth anniversary of their marriage by a festival, which they
call the "Silver Wedding." And thus Major Warfield and Marah resolved
to keep this first of August, and further to honor the occasion by
uniting the hands of their young people.
There was but one cloud upon the happiness of Capitola; this was the
approaching execution of Black Donald.
No one else seemed to care about the matter, until a circumstance
occurred which painfully aroused their interest.
This was the fact that the Governor, through the solicitation of
certain ministers of the gospel who represented the condemned as
utterly unprepared to meet his fate, had respited him until the first
of August, at which time he wished the prisoner to be made to
understand that his sentence would certainly, without further delay, be
carried into effect.
This carried a sort of consternation into the heart of every member of
the Hurricane Hall household!
The idea of Black Donald being hanged in their immediate neighborhood
upon their wedding day was appalling!
Yet there was no help for it, unless their wedding was postponed to
another occasion than that upon which Old Hurricane had set his heart.
No one knew what to do.
Cap fretted herself almost sick. She had cudgeled her brains to no
purpose. She had not been able to think of any plan by which she could
deliver Black Donald. Meantime the last days of July were rapidly
passing away.
Black Donald in the condemned cell maintained his firmness, resolutely
asserting his innocence of any capital crime, and persistently refusing
to give up his band. As a last motive of confession, the paper written
by Gabriel Le Noir upon his death-bed was shown him. He laughed a loud,
crackling laugh, and said that was all true, but that he, for his part,
never had intended to harm a hair of Capitola's head; that he had taken
a fancy to the girl when he had first seen her, and had only wanted to
carry her off and force her into a marriage with himself; that he had
pretended to consent to her death only for the purpose of saving her
life.