ould you?"

"No--I'm sure you shouldn't have but one. Oh, you couldn't marry more
than one, could you?" She turned her eyes for the first time upon him,
and he saw that some inward warmth seemed to be melting them.

"Well, I'd hate to disappoint you if you were my sister, but there's the
word of the Lord--"

"Oh, but could you _anyway_, even if you didn't have a sister, and there
was no one but _her_ to think of?"

He appeared to debate with himself cautiously.

"Well, now, I must say your teaching has taken a powerful hold on me
this summer--" he reached under her arm and caught her other hand.
"You've been like a sister to me and made me think about these things
pretty deep and serious. I don't know if I could get what you've taught
me out of my mind or not."

"But how could you _ever_ marry another wife?"

"Well, a man don't like to think he's going to the bad place when he
dies, all on account of not marrying a few more times. It sort of takes
the ambition all out of him."

"Oh, it couldn't be right!"

"Well now, I'll do as you say. Do I forget all these things you've been
teaching me, and settle down with one wife,--or do I come into the
Kingdom and lash the cinches of my glory good and plenty by marrying
whenever I get time to build a new end on the house, like old man
Wright does?"

She was silent.

"Like a sister would tell a brother," he urged, with a tighter pressure
of her two hands. But this seemed to recall another trouble to her mind.

"I--I'm not fit to be your sister--don't talk of it--you don't know--"
Her voice broke, and he had to release her hand. Whereupon he put his
own back up against the pine-tree, reached his arm about her, and had
her head upon his shoulder.

"There, there now!"

"But you don't know."

"Well, I _do_ know--so just you straighten out that face. I do know, I
tell you. Now don't cry and I'll fix it all right, I promise you."

"But you don't even know what the trouble is."

"I do--it's about your father and mother--when they were married."

"How did you know?"

"I can't tell you now, but I will soon. Look here, you can believe what
I tell you, can't you?"

"Yes, I can do that."

"Well, then, you listen. Your father and mother were married in the
right way, and there wasn't a single bit of crookedness about it. I
wouldn't tell you if I didn't know and couldn't prove it to you in a
little while. Say, there's one of our wagon-trains coming along here
toward