"'The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon Him, to all that call upon Him in truth.
"'He will fulfil the desire of all that fear Him: He also will hear their cry and save them.'"
Anne saw but two things plainly in all the world—the clear-eyed stranger like a god; this fiery old man who spoke words containing strange, though vague, intimations of comfort. From the agony of her soul but one thought leaped forth—to make the comfort real, to find out how to raise herself from her sin, to become worthy of the goodness which she had that morning for the first time clearly seen. She sprang forward and seized the preacher's arm. Interrupted in his ecstasy, he rolled his eyes down on her but half comprehending.
"How? How?" she gasped. "Help me! What must I do?"
She held out her empty hands with a gesture of appeal. The old man's mind still burned with the fever of his fanatical inspiration. He hardly saw her, and did not understand all the import of her words. He looked at her vacantly, and caught sight of her outstretched hands.
"'And to work with your hands as we command you,'" he quoted vaguely, then shook himself free of her detaining grasp and marched grandly on, rolling out the mighty syllables of the psalms.
"To work with my hands; to work with my hands," the woman repeated looking at her outspread palms. "Yes, that is it!" she said, slowly.
Anne Bingham washed dishes at the Prairie Dog Hotel for a week. The first day was one of visions; the second one of irksomeness; the third one of wearisome monotony. The first was as long as it takes to pass from one shore to the other of the great dream-sea; the second was an age; the third an eternity. The first was rose-hued; the second was dull; the third was filled with the grayness that blurs activity turned to mechanical action.
And on the eighth day occurred the monthly pay-day dance of the Last Chance mine. All the men were drunk, all the women were drunker, but drunkest of all was the undoubted favourite of the company, Bismarck Anne. Two men standing by the door saw nothing remarkable about that—it had happened the last week. But in that time Bismarck Anne had had her chance, she had eaten of the fruit of the Tree, and so now was in mortal sin.