ant; he spoke of many places--Wyoming,
Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, Texas; of towns in New Mexico. To Sheila, her
senses dulled by the drowsiness that was stealing over her, it appeared
that the parson was a foe to Science. His volubility filled the cabin; he
contended sonorously that the earth was not round. The Scriptures, he
maintained, held otherwise. He called Dakota's attention to the seventh
chapter of Revelation, verse one:

"And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of
the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not
blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree."

Several times Sheila heard Dakota laugh, mockingly; he was skeptical,
caustic even, and he took issue with the parson. Between them they managed
to prevent her falling asleep; kept her in a semidoze which was very near
to complete wakefulness.

After a time, though, the argument grew monotonous; the droning of their
voices seemed gradually to grow distant; Sheila lost interest in the
conversation and sank deeper into her doze. How long she had been
unconscious of them she did not know, but presently she was awake again
and listening. Dakota's laugh had awakened her. Out of the corners of her
eyes she saw that he was still seated in the chair beside the wall and
that his eyes were alight with interest as he watched the parson.

"So you're going to Lazette, taking it on to him?"

The parson nodded, smiling. "When a man wants to get married he'll not
care much about the arrangements--how it gets done. What he wants to do is
to get married."

"That's a queer angle," Dakota observed. He laughed immoderately.

The parson laughed with him. It _was_ an odd situation, he agreed. Never,
in all his experience, had he heard of anything like it.

He had stopped for a few hours at Dry Bottom. While there a rider had
passed through, carrying word that a certain man in Lazette, called
"Baldy," desired to get married. There was no minister in Lazette, not
even a justice of the peace. But Baldy wanted to be married, and his
bride-to-be objected to making the trip to Dry Bottom, where there were
both a parson and a justice of the peace. Therefore, failing to induce the
lady to go to the parson, it followed that Baldy must contrive to have the
parson come to the lady. He dispatched the rider to Dry Bottom on this
quest.

The rider had found that there was no regular parson in Dry Bottom and
that the justic