Yet he seemed to-day to be impatient under the teaching, and more than once she felt that he was on the point of interrupting the lesson to some end of his own.

He seemed insufficiently impressed even with the knowledge of astronomy displayed by the prophets of the Book of Mormon, hearing, without a quiver of interest, that when at Joshua’s command the sun seemed to stand still upon Gibeon and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, the real facts were that the earth merely paused in its revolutions upon its own axis and about the sun.  Without a question he thus heard Ptolemy refuted and the discoveries of Copernicus anticipated two thousand years before that investigator was born.  He was indeed deplorably inattentive.  She suspected, from the quick glances she gave him, that he had no understanding at all of what she read.  Yet in this she did him injustice, for now she came to the passage, “They all did swear unto him that whoso should vary from the assistance which Akish desired should lose his head; and whoso should divulge whatsoever thing Akish should make known unto them should lose his life.”  This time he sat up.

“There it is again—­they don’t mind losing their heads.  They were sure the fightingest men—­don’t you think so now?”

As he went on talking she laid the book down and leaned back against the trunk of the big pine under which they sat.  He seemed to be saying something that he had been revolving in his mind while she read.

“I’d hate to have you think you been wasting your time on me this summer, but I’m afraid I’m just too downright unsanctified.”

“Oh, don’t say that!” she cried.

“But I have to.  I reckon I’m like the red-roan sorrel Ed Harris got for a pinto from old man Beasley.  ‘They’s two bad things about him,’ says the old man.  ‘I’ll tell you one now and the other after we swap.’  ‘All right,’ says Ed.  ‘Well, first, he’s hard to catch,’ says Beasley.  ‘That ain’t anything,’ says Ed,—­’just picket him or hobble him with a good side-line.’  So then they traded.  ‘And the other thing,’ says the old man, dragging up his cinches on Ed’s pinto,—­’he ain’t any good after you get him caught.’  So that’s like me.  I’ve been hard to teach all summer, and now I’m not any good after you get me taught.”

“Oh, you are!  Don’t say you’re not.”

“I couldn’t ever join your Church—­”

Her face became full of alarm.

“—­only for just one thing;—­I don’t care very much for this having so many wives.”

She was relieved at once.  “If that’s all—­I don’t approve of it myself.  You wouldn’t have to.”

“Oh, that’s what you say now”—­he spoke with an air of shrewdness and suspicion,—­“but when I got in you’d throw up my duty to me constant about building up the Kingdom.  Oh, I know how it’s done!  I’ve heard your preachers talk enough.”

“But it isn’t necessary.  I wouldn’t—­I don’t think it would be at all nice of you.”