e flannel petticoat! I never could endure
the sight of a novel since. Perhaps that's why Ben is so dumb about his
books--just holds a nacheral grudge against 'em along of my havin' to
borrow slips for him."

"Has the Book of Hiram anything to say against the habit of novel reading,
Mrs. Yellett?" inquired Judith, demurely.

She paused for a moment. "It's mighty inconvenient that I should have
mislaid that book, but rounding up my recollections of it, I recall
something like this: 'Romance is the loco-weed of humanity.'"

"So you don't approve of the Mormon Bible?" ventured Mary.

"I jest nacherally execrates Mormonism, spoken, printed, or in action,"
she said, with an emphasis that suggested the subject had a strong
personal bearing. "I recall a text from the Book of Hiram touching on
Mormon deportment in particklar an' human nature at large. It says, 'Where
several women and one man are gathered together for the purpose of serving
the Lord, the man gets the bulk of the service."

She broke off suddenly, as if she feared she had said too much. "Judy,"
she demanded, "is Mis' Dax busy with Leander now?"

"Not more than usual," smiled Judith.

"Jest tell her for me, will you, that I want to hire her husband to do
some herdin'; Leander's handy, 'n' can work good an' sharp, if he is an
infidel. An' I like to have him over now an' then, as you know, Judy. As
the Book of Hiram says, 'It's neighborly to ease the check-rein of a
gentled husband.' But you tell him I don't want to hear any of his
ever-lastin' fool argufyin' 'bout religion. Leander 'd stop in the middle
of shearin' a sheep to argue that Jonah never came out o' the whale's
belly. I ain't no use for infidels, 'less they're muzzled, which Leander
mos' generally is."

With the feeling that there was an excellent though unspoken understanding
between them, the two girls walked together to the top of the path that
wandered away from camp towards a bluff overlooking wave after wave of
foot-hills, lying blue and still like a petrified sea.

"I'm still dying to know who wrote that letter," begged Mary.

"It was written by a lady who is very anxious to return to Washington, and
she took that means of getting one more vote. Her husband is going to run
for the Senate next term. We hear a good deal of that side of politics,
you know."

"It was certainly convincing," remarked the victim of the letter. "My
aunts detected many virtues in the handwriting."

"But now t