The younger man had listened in deep dejection.

“Yes, it’s to be the old story.  I saw it coming.  The Lord is proving us again.  But surely this will be the last.  He will not again put us through fire and blood.”

He paused, and for a moment his quick brown eyes looked far away.

“And yet, do you know, Bishop, I’ve thought that he might mean us to save ourselves against this Gentile persecution.  Sometimes I find it hard to control myself.”

The Bishop grinned appreciatively.

“So I heer’d.  The Lute of the Holy Ghost got too rambunctious back in the States on the subject of our wrongs.  And so they called you back from your mission?”

“They said I must learn to school myself; that I might hurt the cause by my ill-tempered zeal—­and yet I brought in many—­”

“I don’t blame you.  I got in trouble the first and only mission I went on, and the first time I preached, at that.  When I said, ’Joseph was ordained by Peter, James, and John,’ a drunken wag in the audience got up and called me a damned liar.  I started for him.  I never reached him, but I reached the end of my mission right there.  The Twelve decided I was usefuller here at home.  They said I hadn’t got enough of the Lord’s humility for outside work.  That was why they put me at the head of—­that little organisation I wanted you to join last spring.  And it’s done good work, too.  You’ll join now fast enough, I guess.  You begin to see the need of such doin’s.  I can give you the oath any time.”

“No, Bishop, I didn’t mean that kind of resistance.  It sounded too practical for me; I’m still satisfied to be the Lute of the Holy Ghost.”

“You can be a Son of Dan, too.”

“Not yet, not yet.  We must still be a little meek in the face of Heaven.”

“You’re in a mighty poor place to practise meekness.  What’d you cross the river for, anyway?”

“Why, for father and mother, of course.  They must be safe at Green Plains.  Can I get out there without trouble?”

The Bishop sneered.

“Be meek, will you?  Well, mosey out to Green Plains and begin there.  It’s a burned plains you’ll find, and Lima and Morley all the same, and Bear Creek.  The mobbers started out from Warsaw, and burned all in their way, Morley first, then Green Plains, Bear Creek, and Lima.  They’d set fire to the houses and drive the folks in ahead.  They killed Ed Durfee at Morley for talkin’ back to ’em.”

“But father and mother, surely—­”

“Your pa and ma was druv in here with the rest, like cattle to the slaughter.”

“You don’t mean to say they’re over there on the river bank?”

“Now, they are a kind of a mystery about that—­why they wa’n’t throwed out with the rest.  Your ma’s sick abed—­she ain’t ever been peart since the night your pa’s house was fired and they had to walk in—­but that ain’t the reason they wa’n’t throwed out.  They put out others sicker.  They flung families where every one was sick out into that slough.  I guess what’s left of ’em wouldn’t be a supper-spell for a bunch of long-billed mosquitoes.  But one of them milishy captains was certainly partial to your folks for some reason.  They was let to stay in Phin Daggin’s house till you come.”