“O God, I am tired and ready!  Take me and burn me!”

She was off her horse and quickly at his side.  Follett, to let them be alone, led the horses to the spring below.  It was almost gone now, only the feeblest trickle of a rivulet remaining.  The once green meadows had behaved, indeed, as if a curse were put upon them.  Hardly had grass grown or water run through it since the day that Israel wrought there.  When he had tied the horses he heard Prudence calling him.

“I’m afraid he’s delirous,” she said, when he reached her side.  “He keeps hearing cries and shots, and sees a woman’s hair waving before him, and he’s afraid of something back of him.  What can we do?”

At the foot of the cross the little man was again sounding his endless prayer.

“Bow me, bend me, break me, for I have been soul-proud.  Burn me out—­”

She knelt by his side, trying to soothe him.

“Father—­it’s all right—­it’s Prudence—­”

But at her name he uttered a cry with such terror in it that she shuddered and was still.  Then he began to mutter incoherently, and she heard her own name repeated many times.

“If that awful beating would only stop,” she said to Follett, who had now brought water in the curled brim of his hat.  She tried to have the little man drink.  He swallowed some of the water from the hat-brim, shivering as he did so.

“We ought to have a fire,” she said.  Follett began to gather twigs and sage-brush, and presently had a blaze in front of them.

In the light of the fire the little man could see their faces, and he became suddenly coherent, smiling at them in the old way.

“Why have you come so far in the night?” he asked Prudence, taking one of her cool hands between his own that burned.

“But, you poor little father!  Why have you come, when you should be home in bed?  You are burning with fever.”

“Yes, yes, dear, but it’s over now.  This is the end.  I came here—­to be here—­I came to say my last prayer in the body.  And they will come to find me here.  You must go before they come.”

“Who will find you?”

“They from the Church.  I didn’t mean to do it, but when I was on my feet something forced it out of me.  I knew what they would do, but I was ready to die, and I hoped I could awaken some of them.”

“But no one shall hurt you.”

“Don’t tempt me to stay any longer, dear, even if they would let me.  Oh, you don’t know, you don’t know—­and that Devil’s drumming over there to madden me as on that other night.  But it’s just—­my God, how just!”

“Come away, then.  Ruel will find your horse, and we’ll ride home.”

“It’s too late—­don’t ask me to leave my hell now.  It would only follow me.  It was this way that night—­the night before—­the beating got into my blood and hammered on my brain till I didn’t know.  Prudence, I must tell you—­everything—­”