“’He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:  he leadeth me beside the still waters.’”

She said the psalm with him, and he grew quiet again.

“You will go away with your husband, and go at once—­” He sat up suddenly from where he had been lying, the light of a new design in his eyes.

“Come,—­you will need protection now—­I must marry you at once.  Surely that will be an office acceptable in the sight of God.  And you will remember me better for it—­and kinder.  Come, Prudence; come, Ruel!”

“But, father, you are sick, and so weak—­let us wait.”

“It will give me such joy to do it—­and this is the last.”

She looked at Follett questioningly, but gave him her hand silently when he arose from the ground where he had been sitting.

“He’d like it, and it’s what we want,—­all simple,” he said.

In the light of the fire they stood with hands joined, and the little man, too, got to his feet, helping himself up by the cairn against which he had been leaning.

Then, with the unceasing beats of the funeral-drum in their ears, he made them man and wife.

“Do you, Ruel, take Prudence by the right hand to receive her unto yourself to be your lawful and wedded wife, and you to be her lawful and wedded husband for time and eternity—­”

Thus far he had followed the formula of his Church, but now he departed from it with something like defiance coming up in his voice.

“—­with a covenant and promise on your part that you will cleave to her and to none other, so help you God, taking never another wife in spite of promise or threat of any priesthood whatsoever, cleaving unto her and her alone with singleness of heart?”

When they had made their responses, and while the drum was beating upon his heart, he pronounced them man and wife, sealing upon them “the blessings of the holy resurrection, with power to come forth in the morning clothed with glory and immortality.”

When he had spoken the final words of the ceremony, he seemed to lose himself from weakness, reaching out his hands for support.  They helped him down on to the saddle-blanket that Follett had brought, and the latter now went for more wood.

When he came back they were again reciting the psalm that had seemed to quiet the sufferer.

“’Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil:  for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.’”

Follett spread the other saddle-blanket over him.  He lay on his side, his face to the fire, one moment saying over the words of the psalm, but the next listening in abject terror to something the others could not hear.

“I wonder you don’t hear their screams,” he said, in one of these moments; “but their blood is not upon you.”  Then, after a little:—­

“See, it is growing light over there.  Now they will soon be here.  They will know where I had to come, and they will have a spade.”  He seemed to be fainting in his last weakness.