While she was in sight he watched her, the figure bending lithe as the rod she held, moving lightly, now a long, now a short step, half kneeling to throw the bait into an eddy; then off again with determined strides to the next likely pool.  When he could no longer see her, he fell to work on his fish, scouring their slime off in the dry sand.

When she returned, she found him on his back, his hat off, his arms flung out above his head, fast asleep.  She sat near by on a smooth rock at the water’s edge and waited—­without impatience, for this was the first time she had been free to look at him quite as she wished to.  She studied him closely now.  He seemed to her like some young power of that far strange eastern land.  She thought of something she had heard him say about Dandy:  “He’s game and fearless and almighty prompt,—­but he’s kind and gentle too.”  She was pleased to think it described the master as well as the horse.  And she was glad they had been such fine playmates the whole day long.  When the shadow moved off his face and left it in the slanting rays of the sun, she broke off a spruce bough and propped it against the rock to shield him.

And then she sighed, for they could be playmates only in forgetfulness.  He was a Gentile, and by that token wicked and lost; unless—­and in that moment she flushed, feeling the warmth of a high purpose.

She would save him.  He was worth saving, from his crown of yellow hair to the high heels of his Mexican boots.  Strong, clean, gentle, and—­she hesitated for a word—­interesting—­he must be brought into the Kingdom, and she would do it.  She looked up again and met his wide-open eyes.

They both laughed.  “I sat up with your pa last night,” he said, ashamed of having slept.  “We had some business to palaver about.”

He had tied the fish into a bundle with aspen leaves and damp moss around them, and now they went back down the stream.  In the flush of her new role as missionary she allowed herself to feel a secret motherly tenderness for his immortal soul, letting him help her by hand or arm over places where she knew she could have gone much better alone.

Back at the house they were met by the little bent man, who had tossed upon his bed all day in the fires of his hell.  He looked searchingly at them to be sure that Follett had kept his secret.  Then, relieved by the frank glance of Prudence, he fell to musing on the two, so young, so fresh, so joyous in the world and in each other, seeing them side by side with those little half-felt, timidly implied, or unconsciously expressed confidences of boy and girl; sensing the memory of his own lost youth’s aroma, his youth that had slipped off unrecked in the haze of his dreams of glory.  For this he felt very tenderly toward them, wishing that they were brother and sister and his own.

That evening, while they sat out of doors, she said, very resolutely: 

“I’m going to teach Mr. Follett some truth tomorrow from the Book of Mormon.  He says he has never been baptised in any church.”