a fair start. For the preliminary celebrations during the evening and
night preceding the wedding day the beer furnished by the proprietor
of the New West Hotel would prove sufficient.

It was considered a most fortunate circumstance both by the bride
and groom-elect, that there should have appeared in the city,
the week before, a priest of the Greek Catholic faith, for though
in case of need they could have secured the offices of a Roman
priest from St. Boniface, across the river, the ceremonial would
thereby have been shorn of much of its picturesqueness and efficacy.
Anka and her people had little regard for the services of a Church
to which they owed only nominal allegiance.

The wedding day dawned clear, bright, and not too cold to forbid
a great gathering of the people outside Paulina's house, who stood
reverently joining with those who had been fortunate enough to
secure a place in Paulina's main room, which had been cleared of
all beds and furniture, and transformed for the time being into
a chapel. The Slav is a religious man, intensely, and if need be,
fiercely, religious; hence these people, having been deprived for
long months of the services of their Church, joined with eager and
devout reverence in the responses to the prayers of the priest,
kneeling in the snow unmoved by and apparently unconscious of
the somewhat scornful levity of the curious crowd of onlookers
that speedily gathered about them. For more than two hours the
religious part of the ceremony continued, but there was no sign of
abating interest or of waning devotion; rather did the religious
feeling appear to deepen as the service advanced. At length there
floated through the open window the weirdly beautiful and stately
marriage chant, in which the people joined in deep-toned guttural