But they were also working some placer claims up around Helena, and developing a quartz prospect over at Carson City.  And the freighting was by no means “played out.”  He, himself, had driven a six-mule team with one line over the Santa Fe trail, and might have to do it again.  The resources of the West were not exhausted, whatever they might say.  A man with a head on him would be able to make a good living there for some years to come.

Both father and daughter found him an agreeable young man in spite of his being an alien from the Commonwealth of Israel.  He remained with them three days looking over the country about Amalon, talking with its people and making himself at least not an object of suspicion and aversion, as the casual Gentile was apt to be.  Prudence found herself usually at ease with him; he was so wholly likable and unassuming.  Yet at times he seemed strangely mature and reserved to her, so that she was just a little awed.

He told her in their evenings many wonder-tales of that outside world where the wicked Gentiles lived; of populous cities on the western edge of it, and of vast throngs that crowded the interior clear over to the Atlantic Ocean.  She had never realised before what a small handful of people the Lord had set His hand to save, and what vast numbers He had made with hearts that should be hardened to the glorious articles of the new covenant.

The wastefulness of it rather appalled her.  Out of the world with its myriad millions, only the few thousand in this valley of the mountains had proved worthy of exaltation.  And this young man was doubtless a fair sample of them,—­happy, unthinking, earning perdition by mere carelessness.  If only there were a way to save them—­if only there were a way to save even this one—­but she hardly dared speak to him of her religion.

When he left he told them he was making a little trip through the settlements to the north, possibly as far as Cedar City.  He did not know how long he would be gone, but if nothing prevented he might be back that way.  He shook hands with them both at parting, and though he spoke so vaguely about a return, his eyes seemed to tell Prudence that he would like very much to come.  He had talked freely about everything but the precise nature of his errand in the valley.

In her walks to the canon she thought much of him when he had gone.  She could not put his face into the dream because he was too real and immanent.  He and the dream would not blend, even though she had decided that his fresh-cheeked, clear-eyed face, with its clean smile and the yellow hair above it was almost better to look at than the face of the youth in the play.  It was not so impalpable; it satisfied.  So she mused about them alternately, the dream and the Gentile,—­taking perhaps a warmer interest in the latter for his aliveness, for the grasp of his hand at parting, which she, with astonishment, had felt her own hand cordially returning.