ing. He was here in church now,
keeping his promise to see the bishop with the girl of yesterday; and
while he gravely looked at the bishop, Miss Sabina Stone allowed his arm
to encircle her waist. No soldier had achieved this yet, but Lin was the
first cow-puncher she had seen, and he had given her the handkerchief
from round his neck.

The quiet air blew in through the windows and door, the pure, light
breath from the mountains; only, passing over their foot-hills it had
caught and carried the clear aroma of the sage-brush. This it brought
into church, and with this seemed also to float the peace and great
silence of the plains. The little melodeon in the corner, played by one
of the ladies at the post, had finished accompanying the hymn, and now
it prolonged a few closing chords while the bishop paused before his
address, resting his keen eyes on the people. He was dressed in a
plain suit of black with a narrow black tie. This was because the Union
Pacific Railroad, while it had delivered him correctly at Green River,
had despatched his robes towards Cheyenne.

Without citing chapter and verse the bishop began:

"And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way
off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his
neck and kissed him."

The bishop told the story of that surpassing parable, and then proceeded
to draw from it a discourse fitted to the drifting destinies in whose
presence he found himself for one solitary morning. He spoke unlike many
clergymen. His words were chiefly those which the people round him used,
and his voice was more like earnest talking than preaching.

Miss Sabina Stone felt the arm of her cow-puncher loosen slightly, and
she looked at him. But he was looking at the bishop, no longer gravely
but with wide-open eyes, alert. When the narrative reached the elder
brother in the field, and how he came to the house and heard sounds of
music and dancing, Miss Stone drew away from her companion and let him
watch the bishop, since he seemed to prefer that. She took to reading
hymns vindictively. The bishop himself noted the sun-browned boy face
and the wide-open eyes. He was too far away to see anything but the
alert, listening position of the young cow-puncher. He could not discern
how that, after he had left the music and dancing and begun to draw
morals, attention faded from those eyes that seemed to watch him, and
they filled with dreaminess. It was ver