“Begobs, I have.”
“Do you want to take in Jim Baker's Mormon wife and provide for her? Somebody has to. If you won't let him do it, perhaps you'll do it yourself.”
“No, bedad!”
“Well, then, you'd better go about your business and let him alone. I don't see that we have to meddle with these things. Do you?”
The crowd moved uneasily and laughed, good-naturedly owning to being plucked of its cause and arrested in the very act of returning evil for good.
“I tould you Ludlow was the foine man,” said the torch-bearer to his confederates.
“There's no harm in you boys,” pursued the fine man. “You're not making a war on women.”
“We're not. Thrue for you.”
“If you feel like having a wake over the Mormons, why don't you get more torches and make a procession down the Galilee road? You've done about all you can on Mount Pisgah.”
As they began to trail away at this suggestion and to hail him with parting shouts, Ludlow shut the window and laughed in the dark room.