meek in the face of Heaven.”
“You’re in a mighty poor place to practise meekness. What’d you cross the river for, anyway?”
“Why, for father and mother, of course. They must be safe at Green Plains. Can I get out there without trouble?”
The Bishop sneered.
“Be meek, will you? Well, mosey out to Green Plains and begin there. It’s a burned plains you’ll find, and Lima and Morley all the same, and Bear Creek. The mobbers started out from Warsaw, and burned all in their way, Morley first, then Green Plains, Bear Creek, and Lima. They’d set fire to the houses and drive the folks in ahead. They killed Ed Durfee at Morley for talkin’ back to ’em.”
“But father and mother, surely—”
“Your pa and ma was druv in here with the rest, like cattle to the slaughter.”
“You don’t mean to say they’re over there on the river bank?”
“Now, they are a kind of a mystery about that—why they wa’n’t throwed out with the rest. Your ma’s sick abed—she ain’t ever been peart since the night your pa’s house was fired and they had to walk in—but that ain’t the reason they wa’n’t throwed out. They put out others sicker. They flung families where every one was sick out into that slough. I guess what’s left of ’em wouldn’t be a supper-spell for a bunch of long-billed mosquitoes. But one of them milishy captains was certainly partial to your folks for some reason. They was let to stay in Phin Daggin’s house till you come.”
“And Prudence—the Corsons—Miss Prudence Corson?”
“Oh, ho! So she’s the one, is she? Now that reminds me, mebbe I can guess the cute of that captain’s partiality. That girl’s been kind of lookin’ after your pa and ma, and that same milishy captain’s been kind of lookin’ after the girl. She got him to let her folks go to Springfield.”
“But that’s the wrong way.”
“Well, now, I don’t want to spleen, but I never did believe Vince Corson was anything more’n a hickory Saint—and there’s been a lot of talk—but you get yours from the girl. If I ain’t been misled, she’s got some ready for you.”
“Bishop, will there be a way for us to get into the temple, for her to be sealed to me? I’ve looked forward to that, you know. It would be hard to miss it.”
“The mob’s got the temple, even if you got the girl. There’s a verse writ in charcoal on the portal:—
“‘Large house, tall steeple,
Silly priests, deluded people.’
“That’s how it is for the temple, and the mob’s bunked there. But the girl may have changed her mind, too.”
The young man’s expression became wistful and gentle, yet serenely sure.
“I guess you never knew Prudence at all well,” he said. “But come, can’t we go to them? Isn’t Phin Daggin’s house near?”
“You may git there all right. But I don’t want my part taken out of the tree of life jest yet. I ain’t aimin’ to show myself none. Hark!”
From outside came the measured, swinging tramp of men.
“Come see how the Lord is proving us—and step light.”
They tiptoed through the other rooms to the front of the house.
“There’s a peek-hole I made this morning—take it. I’ll make me one here. Don’t move the curtain.”
They put their eyes to the holes and were still. The quick, rhythmic, scuffling tread of feet drew nearer, and a company of armed men marched by with bayonets fixed. The captain, a handsome, soldierly young fellow, glanced keenly from right to left at the houses along the line of march.
“We’re all right,” said the Bishop, in low tones. “The cusses have been here once—unless they happened to see us. They’re startin’ in now down on the flat to make sure no poor sick critter is left in bed in any of them houses. Now’s your chance if you want to git up to Daggin’s. Go out the back way, follow up the alleys, and go in at the back when you git there. But remember, ‘Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path that biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall fall backward!’ In Clay County we had to eat up the last mule from the tips of his ears to the end of the fly-whipper. Now we got to pass through the pinches again. We can’t stand it for ever.”
“The spirit may move us against it, Brother Seth.”
“I wish to hell it would!” replied the Bishop.
Chapter III.
The Lute of the Holy Ghost Breaks His Fast
In his cautious approach to the Daggin house, he came upon her unawares—a slight, slender, shapely thing of pink and golden flame, as she poised where the sun came full upon her. One hand clutched her flowing blue skirts snugly about her ankles; the other opened coaxingly to a kitten crouched to spring on the limb of an apple-tree above her. The head was thrown back, the vivid lips were parted, and he heard her laugh low to herself. Near by was a towering rose-bush, from which she had broken the last red rose, large, full, and lush, its petals already loosened. Now she wrenched away a handful of these, and flung them upward at the watchful kitten. The scarlet flecks drifted back around her and upon her. Like little red butterflies hovering in golden sunlight, they lodged in her many-braided yellow hair, or fluttered down the long curls that hung in front of her ears. She laughed again under the caressing shower. Then she tore away the remaining petals and tossed them up with an elf-like daintiness, not at the crouched and expectant kitten this time, but so that the whole red rain floated tenderly down upon her upturned face and into the folds of the white kerchief crossed upon her breast. She waited for the last feathery petal. Her hidden lover saw it lodge in the little hollow at the base of her bare, curved throat. He could hold no longer.
Stepping from the covert that had shielded him, he called softly to her.
“Prudence—Prue!”
She had reached again for the kitten, but at the sound of his low, vigorous note, she turned quickly toward him, colouring with a glow that spread from the corner of the crossed kerchief up to the yellow hair above her brow. She answered with quick breaths.
“Joel—Joel—Joel!”
She laughed aloud, clapping her small hands, and he ran to her—over beds of marigolds, heartsease, and lady’s-slippers, through a row of drowsy-looking, heavy-headed dahlias, and past other withering flowers, all but choked out by the rank garden growths of late summer. Then his arms opened and seemed to swallow the leaping little figure, though his kisses fell with hardly more weight upon the yielded face than had the rose-petals a moment since, so tenderly mindful was his ardour. She submitted, a little as the pampered kitten had before submitted to her own pettings.
“You dear old sobersides, you—how gaunt and careworn you look, and how hungry, and what
