“Brother Joel,—­I—­the—­”

The good man had been full of his message a moment before, but now he stammered and hesitated because of something cold in the other’s eye as it seemed to note the unwonted elegance of his attire.  He took a quick breath and went on.

“You see the Lord has moved me to add another star to my crown.”

“I see; and you have come to get me to seal you?”

“Well, of course I hadn’t thought of it so soon, but if you want to do it to-night—­”

“As soon as you like, Bishop,—­the sooner the better if you are to save the soul of another woman against the day of desolation.  Where is she?” and he turned to go back to the house.  But the Bishop still paused, looking toward the orchard.

“Well, the fact is, Brother Joel, you see the Lord has made me feel to have Prudence for another star in my crown of glory—­your daughter Prudence,” he repeated as the other gazed at him with a sudden change of manner.

“My daughter Prudence—­little Prue—­that child—­that baby?”

“Baby?—­she’s fourteen; she was telling my daughter Mattie so jest the other day, and the Legislatur has made the marrying age twelve for girls and fifteen for boys, so she’s two years overtime already.  Of course, I ain’t fifteen, but I’m safer for her than some young cub.”

“But Bishop—­you don’t consider—­”

“Oh, of course, I know there’s been private talk about her; nobody knows who her mother was, and they say whoever she was you was never married to her, so she couldn’t have been born right, but I ain’t bigoted like some I could name, and I stand ready to be her Saviour on Mount Zion.”

He waited with something of noble concession in his mien.

The other seemed only now to have fully sensed the proposal, and, with real terror in his face, he began to urge the Bishop toward the house, after looking anxiously back to where the child still lingered with the mist of pink blossoms against the leafless boughs above her.

“Come, Brother Seth—­come, I beg of you—­we’ll talk of it—­but it can’t be, indeed it can’t!”

“Let’s ask her,” suggested the Bishop, disinclined to move.

“Don’t, don’t ask her!” He seized the other by the arm.

“Come, I’ll explain; don’t ask her now, at any rate—­I beg of you as a gentleman—­as a gentleman, for you are a gentleman.”

The Bishop turned somewhat impatiently, then remarked with a dignified severity: 

“Oh, I can be a gentleman whenever it’s necessary!”

They went across the fields toward the house, and the Bishop spoke further.

“There ain’t any need to get into your high-heeled boots, Brother Rae, jest because I was aiming to save her to a crown of glory,—­a girl that’s thought to have been born on the wrong side of the blanket!”