know whether I'd die by hunger or fever or
Indians--or snakes."

"Oh, you were seeing snakes!" said Tim, grimly.

"Not the kind you mean; I hadn't anything to drink--"

"No, you never did drink, I remember--just was crooked, and slopped over
women. Well, about the snakes?"

"I caught them to eat, and they were poison-snakes often. And I wasn't
quick at first to get them safe by the neck--they're quick, too."

Tim laughed inwardly. "Getting your food by the sweat of your brow--and a
snake in it, same as Adam! Well, was it in the desert you got your taste
for honey, too, same as John the Baptist--that was his name, if I
recomember?" He looked at the tin of honey on the ground.

"Not in the desert, but when I got to the grass-country."

"How long were you in the desert?"

"Close to a year."

Tim's eyes opened wider. He saw that the man was speaking the truth.

"Got to thinking in the desert, and sort of willing things to come to
pass, and mooning along, you and the sky and the vultures and the hot
hills and the snakes and the flowers--eh?"

"There weren't any flowers till I got to the grass-country."

"Oh, cuss me, if you ain't simple for your kind! I know all about that.
And when you got to the grass-country you just picked up the honey and the
flowers, and a calf and a lamb and a mule here and there, 'without money
and without price,' and walked on--that it?"

The other shrank before the steel in the voice, and nodded his head.

"But you kept thinking in the grass-country of what you'd felt and said
and done--and willed, in the desert, I suppose?"

Again the other nodded.

"It seemed to you in the desert as if you'd saved your own life a hundred
times, as if you'd just willed food and drink and safety to come; as if
Providence had been at your elbow?"

"It was like a dream, and it stayed with me. I had to think in the desert
things I'd never thought before," was the half-abstracted answer.

"You _felt_ good in the desert?"

The other hung his head in shame.

"Makes you seem pretty small, doesn't it? You didn't stay long enough, I
guess, to get what you were feeling for; you started in on the new racket
too soon. You never got really possessed that you was a sinner. I expect
that's it."

The other made no reply.

"Well, I don't know much about such things. I was loose brought up; but
I've a friend"--Laura was before his eyes--"that says religion's all
right, and long ago as I can remember my mo