He fell on his knees at the foot and prayed, not weeping nor in any fever of fear, but as one knowing his sin and the sin of his Church.  The burden of his prayer was, “O God, my own sin cannot be forgiven—­I know it well—­but let me atone for the sins of this people and let me guide them aright.  Let me die on this cross a hundred deaths for each life they put out, or as many more as shall be needed to save them.”

He was strong in his faith again, conscious that he himself was lost, but burning to save others, and hopeful, too, for he believed that a miracle had been vouchsafed to him in the desert.

Nor would the good padre, at the head of his procession of penitents in his little mission out across the desert, have doubted less that it was a miracle than did this unhappy apostle of Joseph Smith, had he known the circumstance of its timeliness; albeit he had become familiar with such phenomena of light and air in the desert.

CHAPTER XXIII.

The Sinner Chastens himself

How to offer the greatest sacrifice—­how to do the greatest service—­these had become his problems.  He concerned himself no longer with his own exaltation either in this world or the world to come.

He resolved to stay south, fearing vaguely that in the North he would be in conflict with the priesthood.  He knew not how; he felt that he was still sound in his faith, but he felt, too, some undefined antagonism between himself and those who preached in the tabernacle.  For his home he chose the settlement of Amalon, set in a rich little valley between the shoulders of the Pine Mountains.

Late in October there was finished for him on the outer edge of the town, near the bank of a little hill-born stream, a roomy log-house, mud-chinked, with a water-tight roof of spruce shakes and a floor of whipsawed plank,—­a residence fit for one of the foremost teachers in the Church, an Elder after the Order of Melchisedek, an eloquent preacher and one true to the blessed Gods.  At one end of the cabin, a small room was partitioned off and a bunk built in it.  A chair and a water-basin on a block comprised its furniture.  This room he reserved for himself.

As to the rest of the house, his ideas were at first cloudy.  He knew only that he wished to serve.  Gradually, however, as his mind worked over the problem, the answer came with considerable clearness.  He thought about it much on his way north, for he was obliged to make the trip to Salt Lake City to secure supplies for the winter, some needed articles of furniture for the house, and his wagons and stock.

He was helped in his thinking on a day early in the journey.  Near a squalid hut on the outskirts of Cedar City he noticed a woman staggering under an armful of wood.  She was bareheaded, with hair disordered, her cheeks hollowed, and her skin yellow and bloodless.  He remembered the tale he had heard when he came down.  He thought she must be that wife of Bishop Snow who had been put away.  He rode up to the cabin as the woman threw her wood inside.  She was weak and wretched-looking in the extreme.