Before answering her, Ralph takes up the light, walks into the other room, examines it; goes up the ladder, into the loft overhead, and finally inspects the outside of the house; then he returns, saying: "No one is within hearing!" comes up to her, and whispers:
"The Mormon Church!"
"What authority has the Mormon Church over me?" asks the young lady, raising her voice a little.
"Hush! Not so loud!" he returns. "The Mormon Church claims authority over the children, by virtue of their authority over the parent. In ordinary cases they perhaps would not at this late date exercise it, but in my case it is different. I am so prominent. They know to lose me would be a blow to them. At present they have lost several rich members, and they are desperate! And I"—here his lips approach her ear, and form rather than say the words—his voice is so low, his lips so trembling—"and I have been making arrangements to apostatize!"
"God bless you for that!" cries Erma.
To this he whispers: "You don't suppose that I ever swallowed the dogmas of Joe Smith, which I preached as Mormon bishop? I joined them to desert them the moment I had made what money I wanted out of these Latter-Day Saints!" And, forgetting himself, he gives out two or three jeering scoffs. But the next moment his face grows frightened, and he mutters: "I have been"—his voice is very low again—"making arrangements to withdraw all my property from this Territory. I have now in New York, besides the million settled on you, a very large sum of money; but I have also such a block of stock of the Utah Central Railway that, if I sell it to the right parties, the Mormon Church will lose control of the road; that I have not yet been able to remove. But they suspect me!" he goes on dolefully. "I have been asked to immediately pay my tithing, which they figure at one hundred thousand dollars for this year, claiming that I have made a million. I have hidden the stock and I was about to refuse, but your coming here has made that, I fear, impossible."
Then he wrings his hands, and says: "When an apostate is cut off, he is destroyed—root and branch. The family suffer as well as the man, and you—and you, Erma—you!"
"Your stock! Is it near here?" asks the girl eagerly.
"Certainly." Here he whispers to her: "In case of anything happening to me, it is hidden in the level running from Shaft No. 2 in the mine, on this hillside. It is in a tin box under the fourth set of timbers to the right of the incline. Remember it!"
"Why not take it? Leave to-night—fly on horseback."