Daniel Newnan Peablossom, at this juncture, facetiously lay down on the ground, with the root of an old oak for his pillow, and called out yawningly to his pa to “wake him when brother Floyd had crossed over the run of the creek and arrived safely at the parson’s.” This caused loud laughter.

Floyd simply noticed it by observing to his brother, “Yes, you think you’re mighty smart before all these folks!” and resumed his tedious route to Parson Gympsey’s, with as little prospect of reaching the end of his story as ever.

Mrs. Peablossom tried to coax him to “jest” say if the parson was coming or not. Polly begged him, and all the bridesmaids implored. But Floyd “went on his way rejoicing,” “When I came to the Piney Flat,” he continued, “old Snip seed something white over in the baygall, and shied clean out o’ the road, and—” Where he would have stopped would be hard to say, if the impatient captain had not interfered.

That gentleman, with a peculiar glint of the eye, remarked, “Well, there’s one way I can bring him to a showing,” as he took a large horn from between the logs, and rung a “wood-note wild,” that set a pack of hounds to yelping. A few more notes, as loud as those that issued from “Roland’s horn at Roncesvalles,” was sufficient invitation to every hound, foist, and “cur of low degree,” that followed the guests, to join in the chorus. The captain was a man of good lungs, and “the way he did blow was the way,” as Squire Tompkins afterwards very happily describe it; and, as there were in the canine choir some thirty voices of every key, the music may be imagined better than described. Miss Tabitha Tidwell, the first bridesmaid, put her hands to her ears and cried out, “My stars! we shall all git blowed away!”

The desired effect of abbreviating the messenger’s story was produced, as that prolix personage in copperas pants was seen to take Polly aside and whisper something in her ear.

“Oh Floyd, you are joking! you oughtn’t to serve me so. An’t you joking, bud?” asked Polly, with a look that seemed to beg he would say yes.

“It’s true as preaching,” he replied: “the cake’s all dough!”

Polly whispered something to her mother, who threw up her hands, and exclaimed, “Oh my!” and then whispered the secret to some other lady, and away it went. Such whispering and throwing up of hands and eyes is rarely seen at a Quaker meeting. Consternation was in every face. Poor Polly was a very personification of “Patience on a monument, smiling at green and yellow Melancholy.”

The captain, discovering that something was the matter, drove off the dogs, and inquired what had happened to cause such confusion. “What the devil’s the matter now?” he said. “You all look as down in the mouth as we did on the Santafee when the quartermaster said the provisions had all give out. What’s the matter? Won’t somebody tell me? Old ’oman, has the dogs got into the kitchen and eat up all the supper? or what else has come to pass? Out with it!”

“Ah, old man, bad news!” said the wife, with a sigh.

“Well, what is it? You are all getting as bad as Floyd, terrifying a fellow to death.”

“Parson Gympsey was digging a new horse-trough, and cut his leg to the bone with a foot-adze and can’t come. Oh, dear!”

“I wish he had taken a fancy to ’a’ done it a week ago, so we mout ’a’ got another parson; or, as long as no other time would suit but to-day, I wish he had cut his derned eternal head off!”

“Oh, my! husband!” exclaimed Mrs. Peablossom. Bushy Creek Ned, standing in the piazza with his fiddle, struck up the old tune of