The Lions of the Lord | Page 8

In Clay
County we had to eat up the last mule from the tips of his ears to the
end of the fly-whipper. Now we got to pass through the pinches again.
We can't stand it for ever."
"The spirit may move us against it, Brother Seth."
"I wish to hell it would!" replied the Bishop.
CHAPTER III.
The Lute of the Holy Ghost Breaks His Fast In his cautious approach to
the Daggin house, he came upon her unawares--a slight, slender,
shapely thing of pink and golden flame, as she poised where the sun
came full upon her. One hand clutched her flowing blue skirts snugly
about her ankles; the other opened coaxingly to a kitten crouched to
spring on the limb of an apple-tree above her. The head was thrown
back, the vivid lips were parted, and he heard her laugh low to herself.
Near by was a towering rose-bush, from which she had broken the last
red rose, large, full, and lush, its petals already loosened. Now she
wrenched away a handful of these, and flung them upward at the
watchful kitten. The scarlet flecks drifted back around her and upon her.
Like little red butterflies hovering in golden sunlight, they lodged in her
many-braided yellow hair, or fluttered down the long curls that hung in
front of her ears. She laughed again under the caressing shower. Then
she tore away the remaining petals and tossed them up with an elf-like
daintiness, not at the crouched and expectant kitten this time, but so
that the whole red rain floated tenderly down upon her upturned face
and into the folds of the white kerchief crossed upon her breast. She
waited for the last feathery petal. Her hidden lover saw it lodge in the
little hollow at the base of her bare, curved throat. He could hold no

longer.
Stepping from the covert that had shielded him, he called softly to her.
"Prudence--Prue!"
She had reached again for the kitten, but at the sound of his low,
vigorous note, she turned quickly toward him, colouring with a glow
that spread from the corner of the crossed kerchief up to the yellow hair
above her brow. She answered with quick breaths.
"Joel--Joel--Joel!"
She laughed aloud, clapping her small hands, and he ran to her--over
beds of marigolds, heartsease, and lady's-slippers, through a row of
drowsy-looking, heavy-headed dahlias, and past other withering
flowers, all but choked out by the rank garden growths of late summer.
Then his arms opened and seemed to swallow the leaping little figure,
though his kisses fell with hardly more weight upon the yielded face
than had the rose-petals a moment since, so tenderly mindful was his
ardour. She submitted, a little as the pampered kitten had before
submitted to her own pettings.
"You dear old sobersides, you--how gaunt and careworn you look, and
how hungry, and what wild eyes you have to frighten one with! At first
I thought you were a crazy man."
He held her face up to his eager eyes, having no words to say,
overcome by the joy that surged through him like a mighty rush of
waters. In the moment's glorious certainty he rested until she stirred
nervously under his devouring look, and spoke.
"Come, kiss me now and let me go."
He kissed her eyes so that she shut them; then he kissed her
lips--long--letting her go at last, grudgingly, fearfully, unsatisfied.
"You scare me when you look that way. You mustn't be so fierce."

"I told him he didn't know you."
"Who didn't know me, sir?"
"A man who said I wasn't sure of you."
"So you are sure of me, are you, Mr. Preacherman? Is it because we've
been sweethearts since so long? But remember you've been much away.
I've seen you--let me count--but one little time of two weeks in three
years. You would go on that horrid mission."
"Is not religion made up of obedience, let life or death come?"
"Is there no room for loving one's sweetheart in it?"
"One must obey, and I am a better man for having denied myself and
gone. I can love you better. I have been taught to think of others. I was
sent to open up the gospel in the Eastern States because I had been
endowed with almost the open vision. It was my call to help in the
setting up of the Messiah's latter-day kingdom. Besides, we may never
question the commands of the holy priesthood, even if our wicked
hearts rebel in secret."
"If you had questioned the right person sharply enough, you might have
had an answer as to why you were sent."
"What do you mean? How could I have questioned? How could I have
rebelled against the stepping-stone of my exaltation?"
His face relaxed