But at least for a little while he could put it off.

CHAPTER XXX.

How the World Did not Come to an End

In doubt and fear, the phantom of a dreadful certainty creeping always closer, the final years went by.  When the world came to be in its very last days, when the little bent man was drooping lower than ever, and Prudence was seventeen, there came another Prince of Israel to save her into the Kingdom while there was yet a time of grace.  On this occasion the suitor was no less a personage than Bishop Warren Snow, a holy man and puissant, upon whom the blessed Gods had abundantly manifested their favour.  In wives and children, in flocks and herds, he was rich; while, as to spiritual worth, had not that early church poet styled him the Entablature of Truth?

But Prudence Rae, once so willing to be saved by the excellent Wild Ram of the Mountains, had fled in laughing confusion from this later benefactor, when he had made plain one day the service he sought to do her soul.  A moment later he had stood before her father in all his years of patriarchal dignity, hale, ruddy, and vast of girth.

“She’s a woman now, Brother Snow,—­free to choose for herself,” the father had replied to his first expostulations.

“Counsel her, Brother Rae.”  In the mind of the Bishop, “counsel,” properly applied, was a thing not long to be resisted.

“She would treat my counsel as shortly as she treated your proposal, Brother Snow.”

The Entablature of Truth glanced out of the open door to where Tom Potwin could be seen, hastening importantly upon his endless and mysterious errands, starting off abruptly a little way, stopping suddenly, with one hand raised to his head, as if at that instant remembering a forgotten detail, and then turning with new impetus to walk swiftly in the opposite direction.

“There ain’t any one else after her, is there, Brother Rae,—­any of these young boys?”

“No, Bishop—­no one.”

“Well, if there is, you let me know.  I’ll be back again, Brother Rae.  Meantime, counsel her—­counsel her with authority.”

The Entablature of Truth had departed with certain little sidewise noddings of his head that seemed to indicate an unalterable purpose.

The girl came to her father, blushing and still laughing confusedly, when the rejected one had mounted his horse and ridden away.

“Oh, Daddy, how funny!—­to think of marrying him!”

He looked at her anxiously.  “But you wanted to marry Bishop Wright—­at least, you—­”

She laughed again.  “How long ago—­years ago—­I must have been a baby.”

“You were old enough to point out that he would save you in the after-time.”

“I remember; I could see myself sitting by him on a throne, with the Saints all around us on other thrones, and the Gentiles kneeling to serve us.  We were in a big palace that had a hundred closets in it, and in every closet there hung a silk dress for me—­a hundred silk dresses, each a different colour, waiting for me to wear them.”