the group of children now
jeering him from a safe distance, his eyes bright for the moment, and
his face lighted with a weak, loose-lipped smile.

"Who is that fellow, Bishop?" he asked of his host for the night, a few
moments later, when he dismounted in front of the cabin. The Bishop
shaded his eyes with his hand and peered up the road at the shambling
figure once more moving ahead of the tormenting children.

"That? Oh, that's only Tom Potwin. You heard about him, I guess. No?
Well, he's a simple--been so four years now. Don't you recollect? He's
the lad over at Manti who wouldn't give up the girl Bishop Warren Snow
wanted. The priesthood tried every way to make him; they counselled him,
and that didn't do; then they ordered him away on mission, but he
wouldn't go; and then they counselled the girl, but she was stubborn
too. The Bishop saw there wasn't any other way, so he had him called to
a meeting at the schoolhouse one night. As soon as he got there, the
lights was blowed out, and--well, it was unfortunate, but this boy's
been kind of an idiot ever since."

"Unfortunate! It was awful!"

"Not so awful as refusing to obey counsel."

"What became of the girl?"

"Oh, she saw it wasn't no use trying to go against the Lord, so she
married the Bishop. He said at the time that he knew she'd bring him bad
luck--she being his thirteenth--and she did, she was that hifalutin. He
had to put her away about a year ago, and I hear she's living in a
dugout somewhere the other side of Cedar City, a-starving to death they
tell me, but for what the neighbours bring her. I never did see why the
Bishop was so took with her. You could see she'd never make a worker,
and good looks go mighty fast."

He dreamed that night that the foundations of the great temple they were
building had crumbled. And when he brought new stones to replace the
old, these too fell away to dust in his hands.

The next evening he reached Cedar City. Memories of this locality began
to crowd back upon him with torturing clearness; especially of the
morning he had left Hamblin's ranch. As he mounted his horse two of the
children saved from the wagon-train had stood near him,--a boy of seven
and another a little older, the one who had fought so viciously with him
when he was separated from the little girl. He remembered that the
younger of the two boys had forgotten all but the first of his name. He
had told them that it was John Calvin--something; he coul