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James was standing with a group of young men on the
village-green, when Isaac Welles, the whilom blackberry-boy, rushed
up, breathless, to say that he had been detained in the church and had
actually seen Nelly and Mr. Brooke married.
In the first eager questions that followed this announcement, no one
noticed James, until they were astonished to see him fall heavily to the
ground. He had fainted. They had not mentioned the publication of the
banns to him, and he was wholly unprepared for this utter annihilation
of all his hopes. Welles sprang to his side, and they raised him
quickly. He was a strong man, and before they could bring any
restoratives he had recovered.
"It is nothing," he said, with a sickly smile. "I think it must have
been a sunstroke. It is confoundedly hot."
This lame explanation was accepted, and James refused to go into any of
the neighbors' houses, though he consented to seat himself, for a few
moments, on a rustic bench in the shade of the trees.


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