“What’s that got to do with this town?” demanded Mr. Bangs, impatiently.

“Why, considering how near busted the town is—­and all the timber cut off and the farms run out—­I wouldn’t wonder a mite if the right kind of a preacher could get ’em into a frame of mind where they’d be willing to start for anywhere—­even straight down, provided they couldn’t arrange matters so as to go straight up, like the Carmel folks planned on.  Not as how I say that these folks are going to get up and hump it out of Egypt!  But there’s a whole lot of restle-ness in ’em!  That’s plain enough to be seen!”

“If there’s half as much of it in ’em as there is in me, right now, they’ll all follow me when I drive out of town in the morning,” declared Mr. Bangs.  “And what that king pin, name o’ Britt, is building that palace over there for is beyond my guess.”

“Expects to grab off the girl of the Vaniman case,” said the aide, who had put himself in the way of hearing all the local gossip.

Mr. Bangs lighted a fresh cigar.  “Say, I’d like to find out whether this stir here is a go-upper proposition.  I’d join the party and go up, too, if I thought I could locate that cashier and find out where he hid that mess of gold.”

“Try the ouija board,” giggled the aide.

However, in his desperate desire for information in general Mr. Bangs proceeded to try something which suited better his practical turn of mind.

He hailed Prophet Elias, who had appeared in the open door of Usial Britt’s shop.  The gloom of the autumn evening was deepened by vapor which came drifting from the lowlands after the night air had chilled the moisture evoked by the sun from the soil.  The open door set a patch of radiance on the dun robe of the dusk.  The light spread upon the vapor, was diffused in it, furnished an aura of soft glow in the center of which stood the robed figure.

Deputy Bangs’s first hail, when Elias opened the door and stood revealed, was contemptuously brusque; he used the tone he commonly employed toward his charges in prison; he perceived at first only the queer old chap, the dusty plodder of the highways, the man of cracked wits.  Bangs spoke as an officer, peremptorily:  “Say, you!  Come over here.  I want to talk with you!”

The Prophet made no move, either with his feet or his tongue.  In the haze that lay between him and Bangs, the man of the robe seemed to tower and to take on a mystic dignity which had been lacking in the candid light of day.  After the silence had continued for some time Bangs spoke again.  His new manner showed that his eyes had been reprimanding his tongue.  “Excuse me!  I didn’t mean to sound short.  But would you kindly step across here?  Or”—­the eyes certainly had shamed the tongue and had humbled it—­“or I’ll come over there, if you’d rather have it that way.”

The Prophet strode along the misty path of light and stood in the middle of the road.  “Talk—­but I must ask you to talk to the point and in few words.  I have no time to waste on gossip.”