h that little silk rag of
mine--hold him, two hind legs and one fore, so he can't budge an inch.
I'd just like to see some little, short, kind of plump, pretty
yellow-haired thing come between us."

For an instant, she looked such warm, almost indignant approval that he
believed she was about to express an opinion of her own in the matter,
but she stayed silent, looking away instead with a little movement of
having swallowed something.

"And you, too, if you were my sister, do you think I'd want you married
to a man who'd begin to look around for some one else as soon as he got
you? No, sir--you deserve some decent young fellow who'd love you all
to pieces day in and day out and never so much as look at this little
yellow-haired girl--even if she was almost as pretty as you."

But she was not to be led into rendering any hasty decision which might
affect his eternal salvation. Moreover, she was embarrassed and
disturbed.

"We must go," she said, rising before he could help her. When they had
picked their way down to the mouth of the canon, he walking behind her,
she turned back and said, "Of course you could marry that little
yellow-haired girl with the blue eyes first, the one you're thinking so
much about--the little short, fat thing with a doll-baby face--"

But he only answered, "Oh, well, if you get me into your Church it
wouldn't make a bit of difference whether I took her first or second."

CHAPTER XXXIX.

_A Revelation Concerning the True Order of Marriage_

While matters of theology and consanguinity were being debated in Box
Canon, the little bent man down in the first house to the left, in his
struggle to free himself, was tightening the meshes of his fate about
him. In his harried mind he had formed one great resolution. He believed
that a revelation had come to him. It seemed to press upon him as the
culmination of all the days of his distress. He could see now that he
had felt it years before, when he first met the wife of Elder Tench, the
gaunt, gray woman, toiling along the dusty road; and again when he had
found the imbecile boy turning upon his tormentors. A hundred times it
had quickened within him. And it had gained in force steadily, until
to-day, when it was overwhelming him. Now that his flesh was wasted, it
seemed that his spirit could see far.

His great discovery was that the revelation upon celestial marriage
given to Joseph Smith had been "from beneath,"--a trick of Satan to