At Lander, there got into the stage another old acquaintance, the Bishop of Wyoming.  He knew Lin at once, and held out his hand, and his greeting was hearty.

“It took a week for my robes to catch up with me,” he said, laughing.  Then, in a little while, “How was the East?”

“First-rate,” said Lin, not looking at him.  He was shy of the conversation’s taking a moral turn.  But the bishop had no intention of reverting—­at any rate, just now—­to their last talk at Green River, and the advice he had then given.

“I trust your friends were all well?” he said.

“I guess they was healthy enough,” said Lin.

“I suppose you found Boston much changed?  It’s a beautiful city.”

“Good enough town for them that likes it, I expect,” Lin replied.

The bishop was forming a notion of what the matter must be, but he had no notion whatever of what now revealed itself.

“Mr. Bishop,” the cow-puncher said, “how was that about that fellow you told about that’s in the Bible somewheres?—­he come home to his folks, and they—­well there was his father saw him comin’”—­He stopped, embarrassed.

Then the bishop remembered the wide-open eyes, and how he had noticed them in the church at the agency intently watching him.  And, just now, what were best to say he did not know.  He looked at the young man gravely.

“Have yu’ got a Bible?” pursued Lin.  “For, excuse me, but I’d like yu’ to read that onced.”

So the bishop read, and Lin listened.  And all the while this good clergyman was perplexed how to speak—­or if indeed to speak at this time at all—­to the heart of the man beside him for whom the parable had gone so sorely wrong.  When the reading was done, Lin had not taken his eyes from the bishop’s face.

“How long has that there been wrote?” he asked.

He was told about how long.

“Mr. Bishop,” said Lin, “I ain’t got good knowledge of the Bible, and I never figured it to be a book much on to facts.  And I tell you I’m more plumb beat about it’s having that elder brother, and him being angry, down in black and white two thousand years ago, than—­than if I’d seen a man turn water into wine, for I’d have knowed that ain’t so.  But the elder brother is facts—­dead-sure facts.  And they knowed about that, and put it down just the same as life two thousand years ago!”

“Well,” said the bishop, wisely ignoring the challenge as to miracles, “I am a good twenty years older than you, and all that time I’ve been finding more facts in the Bible every day I have lived.”

Lin meditated.  “I guess that could be,” he said.  “Yes; after that yu’ve been a-readin’, and what I know for myself that I didn’t know till lately, I guess that could be.”