Withers then called upon Smith, Henninger, and Beal, and their wives.  Shefford found himself cordially received, and what little he did say showed him how he would be listened to when he cared to talk.  These folk were plain and kindly, and he found that there was nothing about them to dislike.  The men appeared mild and quiet, and when not conversing seemed austere.  The repose of the women was only on the surface; underneath he felt their intensity.  Especially in many of the younger women, whom he met in the succeeding hour, did he feel this power of restrained emotion.  This surprised him, as did also the fact that almost every one of them was attractive and some of them were exceedingly pretty.  He became so interested in them all as a whole that he could not individualize one.  They were as widely different in appearance and temperament as women of any other class, but it seemed to Shefford that one common trait united them—­and it was a strange, checked yearning for something that he could not discover.  Was it happiness?  They certainly seemed to be happy, far more so than those millions of women who were chasing phantoms.  Were they really sealed wives, as Withers believed, and was this unnatural wife-hood responsible for the strange intensity?  At any rate he returned to camp with the conviction that he had stumbled upon a remarkable situation.

He had been told the last names of only three women, and their husbands were in the village.  The names of the others were Ruth, Rebecca, Joan—­he could not recall them all.  They were the mothers of these beautiful children.  The fathers, as far as he was concerned, were as intangible as myths.  Shefford was an educated clergyman, a man of the world, and, as such, knew women in his way.  Mormons might be strange and different, yet the fundamental truth was that all over the world mothers of children were wives; there was a relation between wife and mother that did not need to be named to be felt; and he divined from this that, whatever the situation of these lonely and hidden women, they knew themselves to be wives.  Shefford absolutely satisfied himself on that score.  If they were miserable they certainly did not show it, and the question came to him how just was the criticism of uninformed men?  His judgment of Mormons had been established by what he had heard and read, rather than what he knew.  He wanted now to have an open mind.  He had studied the totemism and exogamy of the primitive races, and here was his opportunity to understand polygamy.  One wife for one man—­that was the law.  Mormons broke it openly; Gentiles broke it secretly.  Mormons acknowledged all their wives and protected their children; Gentiles acknowledged one wife only.  Unquestionably the Mormons were wrong, but were not the Gentiles still more wrong?

. . . . . . . . . . .

The following day Joe Lake appeared reluctant to start for Stonebridge with Withers.