had forgotten
himself, he fell contritely to his knees beside the bunk and prayed that
this face might never remind him of aught but his sin; that he might
have cross after cross added to his burden until the weight should crush
him; and that this might atone, not for his own sins, which must be
punished everlastingly, but in some measure for the sins of his
misguided people.

In the outer room his wives, sitting together before the big fireplace,
were agreeing that he was a good man.

CHAPTER XXIV.

_The Coming of the Woman-Child_

The next day he sent across the settlement for the child, waiting for
her with mixed emotions,--a trembling merge of love and fear, with
something, indeed, of awe for this woman-child of her mother, who had
come to him so deviously and with a secret significance so mighty of
portent to his own soul. When they brought her in at last, he had to
brace himself to meet her.

She came and stood before him, one foot a little advanced, several dolls
clutched tightly under one arm, and her bonnet swinging in the other
hand. She looked up at him fearlessly, questioningly, but with no sign
of friendliness. He saw and felt her mother in all her being, in her
eyes and hair, in the lines of her soft little face, and indefinably in
her way of standing or moving. He was seized with a sudden fear that the
mother watched him secretly out of the child's eyes, and with the
child's lips might call to him accusingly, with what wild cries of
anguish and reproach he dared not guess. He strove to say something to
her, but his lips were dry, and he made only some half-articulate sound,
trying to force a smile of assurance.

Then the child spoke, her serious, questioning eyes upon him
unwaveringly.

"Are you a damned Mormon?"

It broke the spell of awe that had lain upon him, so that he felt for
the moment only a pious horror of her speech. He called Christina to
take charge of her, and Martha, the second wife, to put away her little
bundle of clothing, and Tom Potwin to fetch water for her bath. He
himself went to be alone where he could think what must be done for her.
From an entry in the little Bible, written in letters that seemed to
shout to him the accusation of his crime, he had found that she must now
be five years old. It was plainly time that he should begin to supply
her very apparent need of religious instruction.

When she had become a little used to her surroundings later in the day