about
which there was nothing extraordinary, nothing not pleasing to God and
in conformity to His revealed word. Bishop Wright indeed was puzzled to
account for the heat of his manner, and in recounting the interview
later to Elder Wardle, he threw out an intimation about strong drink.
"To tell you the truth," he said, "I suspicion he'd jest been putting a
new faucet in the cider barrel."

When Prudence came in from the blossoming peach-trees that night her
father called her to him to sit on his lap in the dusk while the
crickets sang, and grow sleepy as had been her baby habit.

"What did Bishop Wright want?" she asked, after her head was pillowed on
his arm. Relieved that it was over, now even a little amused, he told
her:

"He wanted to take my little girl away, to marry her."

She was silent for a moment, and then:

"Wouldn't that be fine, and we could build each other up in the
Kingdom."

He held her tighter.

"Surely, child, you couldn't marry him?"

"But of course I could! Isn't he tried in the Kingdom, so he is sure to
have all those thrones and dominions and power?"

"But child, child! That old man with all his wives--"

"But they say old men are safer than young men. Young men are not tried
in the Kingdom. I shouldn't like a young husband anyway--they always
want to play rough games, and pull your hair, and take things away from
you, and get in the way."

"But, baby,--don't, _don't_--"

"Why, you silly father, your voice sounds as if you were almost
crying--please don't hold me so tight--and some one must save me before
the Son of Man comes to judge the quick and the dead; you know a woman
can't be saved alone. I think Bishop Wright would make a fine husband,
and I should have Mattie Wright to play with every day."

"And you would leave me?"

"Why, that's so, Daddy! I never thought--of course I can't leave my
little sorry father--not yet. I forgot that. I couldn't leave you. Now
tell me about my mother again."

He told her the story she already knew so well--how beautiful her mother
was, the look of her hair and eyes, her slenderness, the music of her
voice, and the gladness of her laugh.

"And won't she be glad to see us again. And she will come before
Christina and Lorena, because she was your first wife, wasn't she?"

He was awake all night in a fever of doubt and rebellion. By the light
of the candle, he read in the book of Mormon passages that had often
puzzled but never troubled h