He seemed so young, then, that one would have said he had just come
in gaily from some game with the other youths of Alder.
Out of the kitchen he passed into the hall, and there he understood the
meaning of the silence, for both the doors to the front room were open, and
through the doors he heard a single voice, deep and solemn, and through the
doors he saw the crowd standing motionless. Their heads did not stir,--
heads on which the hair was plastered smoothly down--and when some one
raised a hand to touch an itching ear, or nose, he moved his arm with such
caution that it seemed he feared to set a magazine of powder on fire. All
their backs were towards Barry, where he stood in the hall, and as he
glided toward them, he heard the deep voice stop, and then the trembling
voice of a girl speak in reply.
At the first entrance he paused, for the whole scene unrolled before him.
It was a wedding. Just in front of him, on chairs and even on benches, sat
the majority of adult Alder,--facing these stood the wedding pair with the
minister just in front of them.
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