Page:Cuthbert Bede - The White Wife.djvu/31

12 And he went away, telling the old man that if he pleased he and his daughter might come and dance at the wedding. Then the old man knelt down, and uncovering his head, and laying his hand upon a Bible, took an oath, so solemn and yet so awful that I dare not repeat its words; but they supplicated for maledictions and curses on the approaching union, and on any who might be born of it. I may here say, that, although the marriage took place on New Year's Day, as appointed, and, although the wedded couple lived together nearly forty years, yet that no child was ever born to them; and that it was said that this very circumstance led to great bitterness between them, so that they passed their days in wrangling and misery. If such was the case, the young girl whom he had so grossly deceived was avenged; and for her and for her babe the childless farmer's son would willingly have given all his wealth.

The old man had no need to break the news to his daughter, for she had already experienced, in the great bitterness of her misery, that she had been made a by-word and no wife. Although her father had threatened, that if such were the