The King of Beaver, and Beaver Lights | Page 2

not a rugged coastline, though the harbor of St. James was deep and good. Land rose from it in gentle undulations rather than hills.
Emeline and Roxy walked inland, with their backs to the harbor. In summer, farmers who lived nearest St. James took short-cuts through the woods to meeting, and let their horses rest.
The last house on the street was a wooden building of some pretension, having bow-windows and a veranda. High pickets enclosed a secluded garden. It was very unlike the log-cabins of the island.
"He lives here," said Roxy.
Emeline did not inquire who lived here. She understood, and her question was--
"How many with him?"
"All of them--eight. Seven of them stay at home, but Mary French travels with him. Didn't you notice her in the Tabernacle--the girl with the rose in her hair, sitting near the platform?"
"Yes, I noticed her. Was that one of his wives?"
Roxy waited until they had struck into the woods path, and then looked guardedly behind her.
"Mary French is the youngest one. She was sealed to the Prophet only two years ago; and last winter she went travelling with him, and we heard she dressed in men's clothes and acted as his secretary."
"But why did she do that when she was his wife according to your religion?"
"I don't know," responded Roxy, mysteriously. "The Gentiles on the mainland are very hard on us."
They followed the track between fragrant grapevine and hickory, and the girl bred to respect polygamy inquired--
"Do you feel afraid of the Prophet, Cousin Emeline?"
"No, I don't," retorted the girl bred to abhor it.
"Sometimes I do. He makes people do just what he wants them to. Mary French was a Gentile's daughter, the proudest girl that ever stepped in St. James. She didn't live on the island; she came here to visit. And he got her. What's the matter, Cousin Emeline?"
"Some one trod on my grave; I shivered. Cousin Roxy, I want to ask you a plain question. Do you like a man's having more than one wife?"
"No, I don't. And father doesn't either. But he was obliged to marry again, or get into trouble with the other elders. And Aunt Mahala is very good about the house, and minds mother. The revelation may be plain enough, but I am not the kind of a girl," declared Roxy, daringly, as one might blaspheme, "that cares a straw for the revelation."
Emeline took hold of her arm, and they walked on with a new sense of companionship.
"A great many of the people feel the same way about it. But when the Prophet makes them understand it is part of the faith, they have to keep the faith. I am a reprobate myself. But don't tell father," appealed Roxy, uneasily. "He is an elder."
"My uncle Cheeseman is a good man," said Emeline, finding comfort in this fact. She could not explain to her cousin how hard it had been for her to come to Beaver Island to live among Mormons. Her uncle had insisted on giving his orphan niece a home and the protection of a male relative, at the death of the maiden aunt by whom she had been brought up. In that day no girl thought of living without protection. Emeline had a few thousand dollars of her own, but her money was invested, and he could not count on the use of it, which men assumed a right to have when helpless women clustered to their hearths. Her uncle Cheeseman was undeniably a good man, whatever might be said of his religious faith.
"I like father myself," assented Roxy. "He is never strict with us unless the Prophet has some revelation that makes him so. Cousin Emeline, I hope you won't grow to be taken up with Brother Strang, like Mary French. I thought he looked at you to-day."
Emeline's face and neck were scarlet above her black dress. The Gentile resented as an insult what the Mormon simply foreboded as distasteful to herself; though there was not a family of that faith on the island who would not have felt honored in giving a daughter to the Prophet.
"I hate him!" exclaimed Emeline, her virgin rage mingled with a kind of sweet and sickening pain. "I'll never go to his church again."
"Father wouldn't like that, Cousin Emeline," observed Roxy, though her heart leaped to such unshackled freedom. "He says we mustn't put our hand to the plough and turn back. Everybody knows that Brother Strang is the only person who can keep the Gentiles from driving us off the island. They have persecuted us ever since the settlement was made. But they are afraid of him. They cannot do anything with him. As long as he lives he is better than an army to keep our lands and homes for us."
"You are in a hard case betwixt