about it; but the shadows lay heavy at its base, and from a
little distance they could distinguish no outline.

But at last they were close by and could pierce the gloom, and there at
the foot of the cross, beside the cairn of stones that helped to support
it, was a little huddled bit of blackness. It moved as they looked, and
they knew the voice that came from it.

"O God, I am tired and ready! Take me and burn me!"

She was off her horse and quickly at his side. Follett, to let them be
alone, led the horses to the spring below. It was almost gone now, only
the feeblest trickle of a rivulet remaining. The once green meadows had
behaved, indeed, as if a curse were put upon them. Hardly had grass
grown or water run through it since the day that Israel wrought there.
When he had tied the horses he heard Prudence calling him.

"I'm afraid he's delirous," she said, when he reached her side. "He
keeps hearing cries and shots, and sees a woman's hair waving before
him, and he's afraid of something back of him. What can we do?"

At the foot of the cross the little man was again sounding his endless
prayer.

"Bow me, bend me, break me, for I have been soul-proud. Burn me out--"

She knelt by his side, trying to soothe him.

"Father--it's all right--it's Prudence--"

But at her name he uttered a cry with such terror in it that she
shuddered and was still. Then he began to mutter incoherently, and she
heard her own name repeated many times.

"If that awful beating would only stop," she said to Follett, who had
now brought water in the curled brim of his hat. She tried to have the
little man drink. He swallowed some of the water from the hat-brim,
shivering as he did so.

"We ought to have a fire," she said. Follett began to gather twigs and
sage-brush, and presently had a blaze in front of them.

In the light of the fire the little man could see their faces, and he
became suddenly coherent, smiling at them in the old way.

"Why have you come so far in the night?" he asked Prudence, taking one
of her cool hands between his own that burned.

"But, you poor little father! Why have _you_ come, when you should be
home in bed? You are burning with fever."

"Yes, yes, dear, but it's over now. This is the end. I came here--to be
here--I came to say my last prayer in the body. And they will come to
find me here. You must go before they come."

"Who will find you?"

"They from the Church. I didn't mean to do it, but wh