Between Beaver and Paragonah that day, toiling intently along the dusty road in the full blaze of the August sun, he met a woman,—­a tall, strong creature with a broad, kind face, burned and seamed and hardened by life in the open.  Yet it was a face that appealed to him by its look of simple, trusting earnestness.  Her dress was of stout, gray homespun, her shoes were coarse and heavy, and she was bareheaded, her gray, straggling hair half caught into a clumsy knot at the back of her head.  She turned out to pass him without looking up, but he stopped his horse and dismounted before her.  It seemed to him that here was one whose faith was still fresh, and to such a one he needed to talk.  He called to her: 

“You need something on your head; you are burned.”

She looked up, absently at first, as if neither seeing nor hearing him.  Then intelligence came into her eyes.

“You mean my Timothy needs something on his head—­poor man!  You see he broke out of the house last night, because the Bishop told him I was to take another husband.  Cruel!  Oh, so cruel!—­the poor foolish man, he believed it, and he cared so for me.  He thought I was bringing home a new man with me—­a new wedding for time and eternity, to build myself up in the Kingdom—­a new wedding night—­with him sitting off, cold and neglected.  But something burst in his head.  It made a roar like the mill at Cedar Creek when it grinds the corn—­just like that.  So he went out into the cold night—­it was sleeting—­thinking I’d never miss him, you see, me being fondled and made over by the new man—­wouldn’t miss him till morning.”  A scowl of indignation darkened her face for an instant, and she paused, looking off toward the distant hills.

“But that was all a lie, a mean lie!  I don’t see how he could have believed it.  I think he couldn’t have been right up here—­” she pointed to her head.

“But of course I followed him, and I’ve been following him all day.  He must have got quite a start of me—­poor dear—­how could he think I’d break his heart?  But I’ll have him found by night.  I must hurry, so good day, sir!” She curtsied to him with a curious awkward sort of grace.  He stopped her again.

“Where will you sleep to-night?”

“In his arms, thank God!”

“But if you happen to miss him—­you might not find him until to-morrow.”

A puzzled look crossed her face, and then came the shadow of a disquieting memory.

“Now you speak so, I remember that it wasn’t last night he left—­it was the night before—­no?—­perhaps three or four nights.  But not as much as a fortnight.  I remember my little baby came the night he left.  I was so mad to find him I suffered the mother-pains out in the cold rain—­just a little dead baby—­I could take no interest in it.  And there has been a night or two since then, of course.  Sleep?—­oh, I’ll sleep some easy place where I can hear him if he passes—­sometimes by the road, in a barn, in houses—­they let me sleep where I like.  I must hurry now.  He’s waiting just over that hill ahead.”