Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/341

 yellow radiance to a silver light It was as if the moon had grown as powerful as himself, and, forsaking the realm of night, had sailed boldly into the day and usurped the place of its monarch. The ocean which washes the shores of Woodbridge was not broken by a ripple. It shone like a vast silver shield stretching out to the white horizon.

After the services in the church, where Margaret's fresh sweet voice led the village choir for the last time, the whole congregation poured out upon the church-green, set about with fir-trees, shut in from the high-road by a famous screen of cypress,—the despair and envy of every church and every gardener in the country side. Here were spread long tables laden with the good things the farmers' wives had been so busy in preparing. At the chief of these Margaret presided, cutting with her own hand the first piece from a gigantic game-pie, as wonderful in its flavor and manufacture as the pasty of the Golden Kootoo. The governor of the State—a Ruysdale of the real old-fashioned sort, a florid, handsome old fellow, with the courtly manners of his grandfather's time—stood on Margaret's right hand, the clergyman on her left. In his speech he made a veiled allusion to the event of her marriage, which was received with great enthusiasm. Barrels of fresh cider and kegs of