wall.

First came the bride, a sorry sight, as pale as winter, clinging to Sir

Daniel's arm, and attended, as brides-maid, by the short young lady who

had befriended Dick the night before. Close behind, in the most radiant

toilet, followed the bridegroom, halting on a gouty foot; and as he

passed the threshold of the sacred building and doffed his hat, his bald

head was seen to be rosy with emotion.

And now came the hour of Ellis Duckworth.

Dick, who sat stunned among contrary emotions, grasping the desk in front

of him, beheld a movement in the crowd, people jostling backward, and

eyes and arms uplifted. Following these signs, he beheld three or four

men with bent bows leaning from the clerestory gallery. At the same

instant they delivered their discharge, and before the clamour and cries

of the astounded populace had time to swell fully upon the ear, they had

flitted from their perch and disappeared.

The nave was full of swaying heads and voices screaming; the

ecclesiastics thronged in terror from their places; the music ceased, and

though the bells overhead continued for some seconds to clang upon the

air, some wind of the disaster seemed to find its way at last even to the

chamber where the ringers were leaping on their ropes, and they also

desisted from their merry labours.

Right in the midst of the nave the bridegroom lay stone-dead, pierced by

The Black Arrow