The little bent man tried again to smile, hoping for a friendly glance, perhaps a hand-clasp without words from some one of them. Seeing that he was shunned, he stepped down off the platform at the side, twisting his hat in his long, thin hands in embarrassment. A moment he stood so, turning to look back at the group of priests and Elders around the Prophet, seeking for any sign, even for a glance that should be not unkind. The little pained smile still lighted his face, but no friendly look came from the others. Seeing only the backs turned toward him, he at length straightened out his crumpled hat, still smiling, and slowly put it on his head; as he turned away he pulled the hat farther over his eyes, and then he was off along the dusty street, looking to neither side, still with the little smile that made his face gentle.
But when he had come to the end of the street and was on the road up the hill, the smile died. He seemed all at once to shrink and stoop and fade,—no longer a Lion of the Lord, but a poor, white-faced, horrified little man who had meant in his heart to give a great revelation, and who had succeeded only in uttering blasphemy to the very face of God’s prophet.
From below, the little groups of excited people along the street looked up and saw his thin, bent figure alone in the fading sunlight, toiling resolutely upward.
Other groups back in the square talked among themselves, not a few in whispers. A listener among them might have heard such expressions as, “He’ll be blood-atoned sure!”—“They’ll make a breach upon him!”—“They’ll accomplish his decease!”—“He’ll be sent over the rim of the basin right quick!” One indignant Saint, with a talent for euphemism, was heard to say, “Brigham will have his spirit disembodied!”
To the priests and Elders on the platform Elder Wardle was saying, “The trouble with him was he was crazy with fever. Why, I’ll bet my best set of harness his pulse ain’t less than a hundred and twenty this minute.”
The others looked at Brigham.
“He’s a crazy man, sure enough,” assented the Prophet, “but my opinion is he’ll stay crazy, and it wouldn’t be just the right thing by Israel to let him go on talking before strangers. You see, it sounds so almighty sane!”
Back in the crowd Prudence and Follett had lingered a little at the latter’s suggestion, for he had caught the drift of the talk. When he had comprehended its meaning they set off up the hill, full of alarm.
At the door Christina met them. They saw she had been crying.
“Where is father, Christina?”