And, perhaps, had it been possible, she would have learo love the Ministers gentle son before she married him, but, not only was it impossible, she also carried withihe child that meant she must be married quickly.
INTERIOR. CHURCH. DAY
Harmonium. Father and Johnny by the altar.
Johnny white, strained; father stoical.
Ministers wife thin-lipped, furious.
Ministers son and Annie-Belle, in simple white cotton wedding-dress, join hands.
MINISTER: Do you take this woman. . .
(Close up) Ministers sons hand slipping wedding ring on to Annie-Belles finger.
INTERIOR. BARN. NIGHT
Fiddle and banjo old-time music.
Vigorous square dance going on; bride and groom lead.
Father at table, glass in hand.
Johnny, beside him, reag for bottle.
Bride and groom e together at end of dance; groom kisses brides cheek. She laughs.
(Close up) Annie-Belle looking shyly up at the Ministers son.
The dance parts them again; as Annie-Belle is handed down the row of men, she staggers and faints.
sternation.
Ministers son and Johnny both run towards her.
Johnny lifts her up in his arms, her head on his shoulder. Eyes opening.
Ministers son reaches out for her. Johns him take hold of her.
She gazes after Johnny beseegly as he disappears among the crowd.
Silence swallowed up the music of the fiddle and the banjo; Death with his hair in braids spread out the sheets on the marriage bed.
INTERIOR. MINISTERS HOUSE. BEDROOM. NIGHT
Annie-Belle in bed, in a white nightgown, clutg the pillow, weeping.
Ministers son, bare back, sitting on side of bed with his baera, head in hands.
In the m, her new mother-in-law heard her vomiting into the chamber-pot and, in spite of her sons protests, stripped Annie-Belle and subjected her to a midwifes iion. She judged her three months gone, or more. She dragged the girl round the room by the hair, slapped her, punched her, kicked her, but Annie-Belle would not tell the fathers name, only promised, swore on the grave of her dead mother, that she would be a good girl in future. The young bridegroom was too bewildered by this turn of events to have an opinion about it; only, to his vague surprise, he knew he still loved the girl although she carried another mans child.
"Bitch! Whore!" said the Ministers wife and strunie-Belle a blow across the mouth that started her nose bleeding.
"Now, stop that, Mother," said the gentle son. "t you see she aint well?"
The terrible day drew to its end. The mother-in-law would have thrown Annie-Bell out oreet, but the boy pleaded for her, and the Minister, praying fuidance, found himself opening the Bible at the parable of the woman taken in adultery aated well upon it.
"Only tell me the name of the father," her young husband said to Annie-Belle.
"Better you dont know it," she said. Then she lied: "Hes gone, now; go west."
"Was it --?" naming one or two.
"You never knew him. He came by the ran his way out west."
Then she burst out g again, aook her in his arms.
"It will be all over town," said the mother-in-law. "That girl made a fool of you!"
She slammed the dishes oable and would have made the girl eat out the back door, but the young husband laid her a place at table with his own hand and led her in and sat her down in spite of his mothers black looks. They bowed their heads frace. Surely, the Mihoug