Back at the house they were met by the little bent man, who had tossed upon his bed all day in the fires of his hell. He looked searchingly at them to be sure that Follett had kept his secret. Then, relieved by the frank glance of Prudence, he fell to musing on the two, so young, so fresh, so joyous in the world and in each other, seeing them side by side with those little half-felt, timidly implied, or unconsciously expressed confidences of boy and girl; sensing the memory of his own lost youth’s aroma, his youth that had slipped off unrecked in the haze of his dreams of glory. For this he felt very tenderly toward them, wishing that they were brother and sister and his own.
That evening, while they sat out of doors, she said, very resolutely:
“I’m going to teach Mr. Follett some truth tomorrow from the Book of Mormon. He says he has never been baptised in any church.”
Follett looked interested and cordial, but her father failed to display the enthusiasm she had expected, and seemed even a little embarrassed.
“You mean well, daughter, but don’t be discouraged if he is slow to take our truth. Perhaps he has a kind of his own as good as ours. A woman I knew once said to me,’ Going to heaven is like going to mill; if your wheat is good the miller will never ask how you came.’”
“But, Father, suppose you get to mill and have only chaff?”
“That is the same answer I made, dear. I wish I hadn’t.”
Later, when Prudence had gone, the two men made their beds by the fire in the big room. Follett was awakened twice by the other putting wood on the fire; and twice more by his pitiful pleading with something at his back not to come in front of him.
Chapter XXXVI.
The Mission to a Deserving Gentile
Not daunted by her father’s strange lack of enthusiasm, Prudence arose with the thought of her self-imposed mission strong upon her. Nor was she in any degree cooled from it by a sight of the lost sheep striding up from the creek, the first level sunrays touching his tousled yellow hair, his face glowing, breathing his full of the wine-like air, and joyously showing in every move his faultless attunement with all outside himself. The frank simplicity of his greeting, his careless unenlightenment of his own wretched spiritual state, thrilled her like an electric shock with a strange new pity for him. She prayed on the spot for power to send him into the waters of baptism. When the day had begun, she lost no time in opening up the truth to him.