this, Brother Seth--you know that Brigham wants
Prudence?" Joel Rae had asked, looking up from the letter, upon which
both his hands had closed tightly.

"Well, I told you he dropped a word or two, jest by way of keeping off
the Princes of Israel down here."

"I must go to Salt Lake at once and talk to him."

"Take her along; likely he'll marry her right off."

"But I can't--I couldn't--Brother Seth, I wish her not to marry him."

The Bishop stared blankly at him, his amazement freezing upon his lips,
almost, the words he uttered.

"Not--want--her--to marry--Brother Brigham Young, Prophet, Seer, and
Revelator, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
in all the world!"

"I must go up and talk to him at once."

"You won't talk him out of it. Brother Brigham has the habit of
prevailing. Of course, he's closer than Dick's hat-band, but she'll have
the best there is until he takes another."

"He may listen to reason--"

"Reason?--why, man, what more reason could he want,--with that splendid
young critter before him, throwing back her head, and flashing her big,
shiny eyes, and lifting her red lips over them little white
teeth--reason enough for Brother Brigham--or for other people I could
name!"

"But he wouldn't be so hard--taking her away from me--"

Something in the tones of this appeal seemed to touch even the heart of
the Wild Ram of the Mountains, though it told of a suffering he could
not understand.

"Brigham is very sot in his ways," he said, after a little, with a
curious soft kindness in his voice,--"in fact, a _sotter_ man I never
knew!"

He drove off, leaving the other staring at the letter now crumpled in
his hand. He also said, in his subsequent narrative to the Entablature
of Truth: "You know I've always took Brother Rae for jest a natural born
_not_, a shy little cuss that could be whiffed around by anything and
everything, but when I drove off he had a plumb ornery fighting look in
them deep-set eyes of his, and blame me if I didn't someway feel sorry
for him,--he's that warped up, like an old water-soaked sycamore plank
that gits laid out in the sun."

But this look of belligerence had quickly passed from the face of Joel
Rae when the first heat of his resentment had cooled.

After that he merely suffered, torn by his reverence for Brigham, who
represented on earth no less a power than the first person of the
Trinity, and by the love for this child who held him to