ed
with her not to deprive him of the day's lesson, especially as the time
was now at hand when he must leave. And so ably did he word his appeal
to her sense of duty that at last she consented to go.

Once in the canon, however, where the pines had stored away the cool
gloom of the night against the day's heat, she was glad she had come.
For, better than being alone with that strange, new hurt, was it to have
by her side this friendly young man, who somehow made her feel as if it
were right and safe to lean upon him,--despite his unregenerate
condition. And presently there, in the zeal of saving his soul, she was
almost happy again.

Yet he seemed to-day to be impatient under the teaching, and more than
once she felt that he was on the point of interrupting the lesson to
some end of his own.

He seemed insufficiently impressed even with the knowledge of astronomy
displayed by the prophets of the Book of Mormon, hearing, without a
quiver of interest, that when at Joshua's command the sun seemed to
stand still upon Gibeon and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, the real
facts were that the earth merely paused in its revolutions upon its own
axis and about the sun. Without a question he thus heard Ptolemy refuted
and the discoveries of Copernicus anticipated two thousand years before
that investigator was born. He was indeed deplorably inattentive. She
suspected, from the quick glances she gave him, that he had no
understanding at all of what she read. Yet in this she did him
injustice, for now she came to the passage, "They all did swear unto him
that whoso should vary from the assistance which Akish desired should
lose his head; and whoso should divulge whatsoever thing Akish should
make known unto them should lose his life." This time he sat up.

"There it is again--they don't mind losing their heads. They were sure
the fightingest men--don't you think so now?"

As he went on talking she laid the book down and leaned back against
the trunk of the big pine under which they sat. He seemed to be saying
something that he had been revolving in his mind while she read.

"I'd hate to have you think you been wasting your time on me this
summer, but I'm afraid I'm just too downright unsanctified."

"Oh, don't say that!" she cried.

"But I _have_ to. I reckon I'm like the red-roan sorrel Ed Harris got
for a pinto from old man Beasley. 'They's two bad things about him,'
says the old man. 'I'll tell you one now and the othe