He saw her ascend the rise with a new spring in her step.  When she reached the top, he saw her pause and look from side to side below her, then start hopefully down toward the next hill.

A mile beyond, back of a great cloud of dust, He found a drove of cattle, and back of these, hot and voiceful, came the good Bishop Wright.  He described the woman he had just met, and inquired if the Bishop knew her.

The Wild Ram of the Mountain mopped his dusty, damp brow, took an easier seat in his saddle, and fanned himself.  “Oh, yes, that’s the first wife of Elder Tench.  When he took his second, eight or ten years ago, something went wrong with this one in her head.  She left the house the same night, and she’s been on the go ever since.  She don’t do any harm, jest tramps back and forth between Paragonah and Parowan and Summit and Cedar City.  I always have said that women is the contrary half of the human race and man is the sanifying half!”

The cattle were again in motion, and the Bishop after them with strong cries of correction and exhortation.

Toward evening Joel Rae entered Paragonah, a loose group of log houses amid outlying fields, now shorn and yellow.  Along the street in front of him many children followed and jeered in the wake of a man who slouched some distance ahead of them.  As Joel came nearer, one boy, bolder than the others, ran forward and tugged sharply at the victim’s ragged gray coat.  At this he turned upon his pursuers, and Joel Rae saw his face,—­the face of an imbecile, with unsteady eyes and weakly drooping jaw.  He raised his hand threateningly at his tormentors, and screamed at them in rage.  Then, as they fell back, he chuckled to himself.  As Joel passed him, he was still looking back at the group of children now jeering him from a safe distance, his eyes bright for the moment, and his face lighted with a weak, loose-lipped smile.

“Who is that fellow, Bishop?” he asked of his host for the night, a few moments later, when he dismounted in front of the cabin.  The Bishop shaded his eyes with his hand and peered up the road at the shambling figure once more moving ahead of the tormenting children.

“That?  Oh, that’s only Tom Potwin.  You heard about him, I guess.  No?  Well, he’s a simple—­been so four years now.  Don’t you recollect?  He’s the lad over at Manti who wouldn’t give up the girl Bishop Warren Snow wanted.  The priesthood tried every way to make him; they counselled him, and that didn’t do; then they ordered him away on mission, but he wouldn’t go; and then they counselled the girl, but she was stubborn too.  The Bishop saw there wasn’t any other way, so he had him called to a meeting at the schoolhouse one night.  As soon as he got there, the lights was blowed out, and—­well, it was unfortunate, but this boy’s been kind of an idiot ever since.”

“Unfortunate!  It was awful!”

“Not so awful as refusing to obey counsel.”