for the end of the world, he had been
nerved to an unwonted vigour. Now he was weak and fit for no further
combat. He waited, with an indifference that amazed him, for the day
when he should openly defy Brigham, and have penalties heaped upon him.

First he would be ordered on a mission to some far corner of the world.
It would mean that he must go alone, "without purse or scrip," leaving
Prudence. He would refuse to go. Thereupon he would be sternly
disfellowshiped. Then, having become an apostate, he would be a fair
mark for many things, perhaps for simple persecution--perhaps for blood
atonement. He had heard Brigham himself say in the tabernacle that he
was ready to "unsheathe his bowie knife" and send apostates "to hell
across lots."

He was ready to welcome that. It were easier to die now than to live;
and, as for being cut off from his glory in the after-time, he had
already forfeited that; would miss it even if he died in fellowship with
Brigham and full of churchly honours; would miss it even if the power on
high should forgive him,--for he himself, he knew, could not forgive his
own sin. So it was little matter about his apostasy, and Prudence should
be saved from a wifehood that, ever since he had pictured her in it, had
seemed to him for the first time unspeakably bad.

They talked but little about it that day, after her first abrupt
refusal. There was too much for each of them to think of. He was obliged
to dwell upon the amazing fact that he must lie in hell until he could
win his own forgiveness, regardless of what gentle pardoning might be
his from God. This, to him, simple and obvious truth, was now his daily
torture.

As for Prudence, she had to be alone to dream her dreams of a love that
should be always single. Brigham's letter, far from disturbing these,
had brought them a zest hitherto lacking. Neither the sacrilege of
refusing him, its worldly unwisdom, nor its possible harm to the little
bent man of sorrows, had as yet become apparent to her. Each day, when
such duties as were hers in the house had been performed, she walked out
to be alone,--always to Box Canon, that green-sided cleft in the
mountain, with the brook lashing itself to a white fury over the
boulders at the bottom. She would go up out of the hot valley into its
cool freshness and its pleasant wood smells, and there, in the softened
blue light of a pine-hung glade, she would rest, and let her fancy build
what heaven-reaching to