"I can't tell you how well I am, and as for food--our Elder Brother has been feeding me all day with the bread of truth. Such wonderful new things the Lord has shown me!"

"But you must not get up. Lie still and we will nurse you."

He refused the food she brought him, and refused Lorena's sage tea. He was not to be cajoled into treating as sickness the first real happiness he had felt for years. He lay still until his little room grew shadowy in the dusk, filled with a great reviving hope that the Lord had raised a new prophet to lead Israel out of bondage.

As the night fell, however, the shadows of the room began to trouble him as of old, and he found himself growing hotter and hotter until he burned and gasped and the room seemed about to stifle him. He arose from the bed, wondering that his feet should be so heavy and clumsy, and his knees so weak, when he felt otherwise so strong. His head, too, felt large, and there rang in his ears a singing of incessant quick beats. He made his way to the door, where he heard the voices of Prudence and Follett. It was good to feel the cool night air upon his hot face, and he rea.s.sured Prudence, who chided him for leaving his bed.

"When you hear me discourse tomorrow you will see how wrong you were about my being sick," he said. But she saw that he supported himself carefully from the doorway along the wall to the near-by chair, and that he sank into it with every sign of weakness. His eyes, however, were aglow with his secret, and he sat nodding his head over it in a lively way. "Brigham was right," he said, "when he declared that any of us might receive revelations from on high; even the least of us--only we are apt to be deaf to the whispered words until the Lord has scourged us. I have been deaf a long time, but my ears are at last unstopped--who is it coming, dear?"

A tall figure, vague in the dusk, was walking briskly up the path that led in from the road. It proved to be the Wild Ram of the Mountains, freshened by the look of rect.i.tude that the razor gave to his face each Sat.u.r.day night.

"Evening, Brother Rae--evening, you young folks. Thank you, I will take a chair. You feeling a bit more able than usual, Brother Rae?"

"Much better, Brother Seth. I shall be at meeting tomorrow."

"Glad to hear it, that's right good--you ain't been out for so long. And we want to have a rousing time, too."

"Only we're afraid he has a fever instead of being so well," said Prudence. "He hasn't eaten a thing all day."

"Well, he never did overeat himself, that I knew of," said the Bishop.

"Not eating ain't any sign with him. Now it would be with me. I never believed in fasting the flesh. The Spirit of the Lord ain't ever so close to me as after I've had a good meal of victuals,--meat and potatoes and plenty of good sop and a couple of pieces of pie. Then I can unb.u.t.ton my vest and jest set and set and hear the promptings of the Lord G.o.d of Hosts. I know some men ain't that way, but then's the time when I beautify _my_ inheritance in Zion the purtiest. And I'm mighty glad Brother Joel can turn out to-morrow. Of course you heard the news?"

"What news, Brother Seth?"

"Brother Brigham gets here at eleven o'clock from New Harmony."

"Brother Brigham _coming_?"

"We're getting the bowery ready down in the square tonight so's to have services out of doors."

"He's coming to-morrow?" The words came from both Prudence and her father.

"Of course he's coming. Ben Hadley brought word over. They'll have a turkey dinner at Beil Wardle's house and then services at two."

The flushed little man with the revelation felt himself grow suddenly cold. He had thought it would be easy to launch his new truth in Amalon and let the news be carried to Brigham. To get up in the very presence of him, in the full gaze of those cold blue eyes, was another matter.

"But it's early for him. He doesn't usually come until after Conference, after it's got cooler."

The Bishop took on the air of a man who does not care to tell quite all that he knows.

"Yes; I suspicion some one's been sending tales to him about a certain young woman's carryings on down here."

He looked sharply at Prudence, who looked at the ground and felt grateful for the dusk. Follett looked hard at them both and was plainly interested. The Bishop spoke again.

"I ain't got no license to say so, but having done that young woman proud by engaging himself to marry her, he might 'a' got annoyed if any one had 'a' told him she was being waited on by a handsome young Gentile, gallivantin' off to canons day after day--holding hands, too, more than once. Oh, I ain't _saying_ anything. Young blood is young blood; mine ain't always been old, and I never blamed the young, but, of course, the needs of the Kingdom is a different matter. Well, I'll have to be getting along now. We're going to put up some of the people at our house, and I've got to fix to bed mother down in the wagon-box again, I reckon. I'll say you'll be with us to-morrow, then, Brother Joel?"

The little bent man's voice had lost much of its life.

"Yes, Brother Seth, if I'm able."

"Well, I hope you are." He arose and looked at the sky. "Looks as if we might have some falling weather. They say it's been moisting quite a bit up Cedar way. Well,--good night, all!"

When he was gone the matter of his visit was not referred to. With some constraint they talked a little while of other things. But as soon as the two men were alone for the night, Follett turned to him, almost fiercely.

"Say, now, what did that old goat-whiskered loon mean by his hintings about Prudence?"

The little man was troubled.

"Well, the fact is, Brigham has meant to marry her."

"You don't mean you'd have let him? Say, I'd hate to feel sorry for holding off on you like I have!"

"No, no, don't think that of me."

"Well, what were you going to do?"

"I hardly knew."

"You better find out."

"I know it--I did find out, to-day. I know, and it will be all right.

Trust me. I lost my faith for a moment just now when I heard Brother Brigham was coming to-morrow; but I see how it is,--the Lord has wished to prove me. Now there is all the more reason why I should not flinch.

You will see that I shall make it all right to-morrow."

"Well, the time's about up. I've been here over two months now, just because you were so kind of helpless. And one of our wagon-trains will be along here about next Monday. Say, she wouldn't ever have married him, would she?"

"No, she refused at once; she refused to consider it at all."

He was burning again with his fever, and there was something in his eagerness that seemed to overcome Follett's indignation.

"Well, let it go till to-morrow, then. And you try to get some rest now. That's what I'm going to do."

But the little bent man, flushed though he was, felt cold from the night air, and, piling more logs on the fire, he drew his chair close in front of it.

As often as Follett wakened through the night he saw him sitting there, sometimes reading what looked like a little old Bible, sometimes speaking aloud as if seeking to memorise a pa.s.sage.

The last Follett remembered to have heard was something he seemed to be reading from the little book,--"The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters."

He fell asleep again with a feeling of pity for the little man.

CHAPTER XL.

_A Procession, a Pursuit, and a Capture_