"Come see how the Lord is proving us--and step light."

They tiptoed through the other rooms to the front of the house.

"There's a peek-hole I made this morning--take it. I'll make me one here. Don't move the curtain."

They put their eyes to the holes and were still. The quick, rhythmic, scuffling tread of feet drew nearer, and a company of armed men marched by with bayonets fixed. The captain, a handsome, soldierly young fellow, glanced keenly from right to left at the houses along the line of march.

"We're all right," said the Bishop, in low tones. "The cusses have been here once--unless they happened to see us. They're startin' in now down on the flat to make sure no poor sick critter is left in bed in any of them houses. Now's your chance if you want to git up to Daggin's. Go out the back way, follow up the alleys, and go in at the back when you git there. But remember, 'Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path that biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall fall backward!' In Clay County we had to eat up the last mule from the tips of his ears to the end of the fly-whipper. Now we got to pa.s.s through the pinches again. We can't stand it for ever."

"The spirit may move us against it, Brother Seth."

"I wish to h.e.l.l it would!" replied the Bishop.

CHAPTER III.

_The Lute of the Holy Ghost Breaks His Fast_

In his cautious approach to the Daggin house, he came upon her unawares--a slight, slender, shapely thing of pink and golden flame, as she poised where the sun came full upon her. One hand clutched her flowing blue skirts snugly about her ankles; the other opened coaxingly to a kitten crouched to spring on the limb of an apple-tree above her.

The head was thrown back, the vivid lips were parted, and he heard her laugh low to herself. Near by was a towering rose-bush, from which she had broken the last red rose, large, full, and lush, its petals already loosened. Now she wrenched away a handful of these, and flung them upward at the watchful kitten. The scarlet flecks drifted back around her and upon her. Like little red b.u.t.terflies hovering in golden sunlight, they lodged in her many-braided yellow hair, or fluttered down the long curls that hung in front of her ears. She laughed again under the caressing shower. Then she tore away the remaining petals and tossed them up with an elf-like daintiness, not at the crouched and expectant kitten this time, but so that the whole red rain floated tenderly down upon her upturned face and into the folds of the white kerchief crossed upon her breast. She waited for the last feathery petal. Her hidden lover saw it lodge in the little hollow at the base of her bare, curved throat. He could hold no longer.

Stepping from the covert that had shielded him, he called softly to her.

"Prudence--Prue!"

She had reached again for the kitten, but at the sound of his low, vigorous note, she turned quickly toward him, colouring with a glow that spread from the corner of the crossed kerchief up to the yellow hair above her brow. She answered with quick breaths.

"Joel--Joel--Joel!"

She laughed aloud, clapping her small hands, and he ran to her--over beds of marigolds, heartsease, and lady's-slippers, through a row of drowsy-looking, heavy-headed dahlias, and past other withering flowers, all but choked out by the rank garden growths of late summer. Then his arms opened and seemed to swallow the leaping little figure, though his kisses fell with hardly more weight upon the yielded face than had the rose-petals a moment since, so tenderly mindful was his ardour. She submitted, a little as the pampered kitten had before submitted to her own pettings.

"You dear old sobersides, you--how gaunt and careworn you look, and how hungry, and what wild eyes you have to frighten one with! At first I thought you were a crazy man."

He held her face up to his eager eyes, having no words to say, overcome by the joy that surged through him like a mighty rush of waters. In the moment's glorious certainty he rested until she stirred nervously under his devouring look, and spoke.

"Come, kiss me now and let me go."

He kissed her eyes so that she shut them; then he kissed her lips--long--letting her go at last, grudgingly, fearfully, unsatisfied.

"You scare me when you look that way. You mustn't be so fierce."

"I told him he didn't know you."

"Who didn't know me, sir?"

"A man who said I wasn't sure of you."

"So you _are_ sure of me, are you, Mr. Preacherman? Is it because we've been sweethearts since so long? But remember you've been much away. I've seen you--let me count--but one little time of two weeks in three years.

You _would_ go on that horrid mission."

"Is not religion made up of obedience, let life or death come?"

"Is there no room for loving one's sweetheart in it?"

"One must obey, and I am a better man for having denied myself and gone.

I can love you better. I have been taught to think of others. I was sent to open up the gospel in the Eastern States because I had been endowed with almost the open vision. It was my call to help in the setting up of the Messiah's latter-day kingdom. Besides, we may never question the commands of the holy priesthood, even if our wicked hearts rebel in secret."

"If you had questioned the right person sharply enough, you might have had an answer as to why you were sent."

"What do you mean? How could I have questioned? How could I have rebelled against the stepping-stone of my exaltation?"

His face relaxed a little, and he concluded almost quizzically:

"Was not Satan hurled from high heaven for resisting authority?"

She pouted, caught him by the lapels of his coat and prettily tried to shake him.

"There--horrid!--you're preaching again. Please remember you're not on mission now. Indeed, sir, you were called back for being too--too--why, do you know, even old Elder Munsel, 'Fire-brand Munsel,' they call him, said you were too fanatical."

His face grew serious.

"I'm glad to be called back to you, at any rate,--and yet, think of all those poor benighted infidels who believe there are no longer revelations nor prophecies nor gifts nor healings nor speaking with tongues,--this miserable generation so blind in these last days when the time of G.o.d's wrath is at hand. Oh, I burn in my heart for them, night after night, suffering for the tortures that must come upon them--thrice direful because they have rejected the message of Moroni and trampled upon the priesthood of high heaven, butchering the Saints of the Most High, and hunting the prophets of G.o.d like Ahab of old."

"Oh, dear, please stop it! You sound like swearing!" Her two hands were closing her ears in a pretty pretense.

He seemed hardly to hear her, but went on excitedly:

"Yet I have done what man could do. I am never done doing. I would gladly give my body to be burned a thousand times if it would avail to save them into the Kingdom. I have preached the word tirelessly-- fanatically, they say--but only as it burned in my bones. I have told them of visions, dreams, revelations, miracles, and all the mercies of this last dispensation. And I have prayed and fasted. Just now coming from winter quarters, when I could not preach, I held twelve fasts and twelve vigils. You will say it has weakened me, but it has weakened only the bonds that the flesh puts upon the spirit. Even so, I fell short of my vision--my tabernacle of flesh must have been too much profaned, though how I cannot dream--believe me, I have kept myself as high and clean as I knew. Yet there was promise. For only last night at the river bank, the spirit came partially upon me. I was taken with a faintness, and I heard above my head a sound like the rustling of silken robes, and the spirit of G.o.d hovered over me, so that I could feel its radiance. All in good time, then, it shall dwell within me, so that I may know a way to save the worthy."

He grasped her wrist and bent eagerly forward, with the same wild look in his eyes that had before disquieted her.

"Mark what I say now--I shall do great works for this generation; I am strangely favoured of G.o.d; I have felt the spirit quicken wondrously within me, and I know the Lord works not in vain; what great wonder of grace I shall do, what miracle of salvation, I know not, but remember, it shall be transcendent; tell it to no one, but I know in my inner secret heart it shall be a greater work than man hath yet done."

He stopped and drew himself up, shaking his head, as if to shrug off the spell of his own feeling.

"Now, now! stop it at once, and come to the house. I've been tending your father and mother, and I'm going to tend you. What you need directly is food. Your look may be holy, but I prefer full cheeks. Not another word until you have eaten every crumb I put before you."

With an air of captor, daintily fierce, she led him toward the house and up to the door, which she pushed open before him.

"Come softly, your mother may be still asleep--no, your father is talking--listen!"

A querulous voice, rough with strong feeling, came from the inner room.

"Here, I tell you, is the prophecy of Joseph to prove it, away back in 1832: 'Verily thus saith the Lord concerning the wars that will shortly come to pa.s.s, beginning at the rebellion of South Carolina, which will terminate in the death and misery of many souls. The days will come that war will be poured out upon all nations, beginning at that place; for behold, the Southern States shall be divided against the Northern States, and the Southern States will call on other nations, even the nation of Great Britain, as it is called.' Now will you doubt again, mother? For persecuting the Saints of the most high G.o.d, this republic shall be dashed to pieces like a potter's vessel. But we shall be safe.

The Lord will gather Israel home to the chambers of the mountains against the day of wrath that is coming on the Gentile world. For all flesh hath corrupted itself on the face of the earth, but the Saints shall possess a purified land, upon which there shall be no curse when the Lord cometh. Then shall the heavens open--"