That Sabbath evening as he sat quietly with Nas Ta Bega, watching the sunset gilding the peaks, he was visited by three of the young Mormon women—­Ruth, Joan, and Hester.  They deliberately sought him and merrily led him off to the village and to the evening service of singing and prayer.  Afterward he was surrounded and made much of.  He had been popular before, but this was different.  When he thoughtfully wended his way campward under the quiet stars he realized that the coming of Bishop Kane had made a subtle change in the women.  That change was at first hard to define, but from every point by which he approached it he came to the same conclusion—­the bishop had not objected to his presence in the village.  The women became natural, free, and unrestrained.  A dozen or twenty young and attractive women thrown much into companionship with one man.  He might become a Mormon.  The idea made him laugh.  But upon reflection it was not funny; it sobered him.  What a situation!  He felt instinctively that he ought to fly from this hidden valley.  But he could not have done it, even had he not been in the trader’s employ.  The thing was provokingly seductive.  It was like an Arabian Nights’ tale.  What could these strange, fatally bound women do?  Would any one of them become involved in sweet toils such as were possible to him?  He was no fool.  Already eyes had flashed and lips had smiled.

A thousand like thoughts whirled through his mind.  And when he had calmed down somewhat two things were not lost upon him—­an intricate and fascinating situation, with no end to its possibilities, threatened and attracted him—­and the certainty that, whatever change the bishop had inaugurated, it had made these poor women happier.  The latter fact weighed more with Shefford than fears for himself.  His word was given to Withers.  He would have felt just the same without having bound himself.  Still, in the light of the trader’s blunt philosophy, and of his own assurance that he was no fool, Shefford felt it incumbent upon him to accept a belief that there were situations no man could resist without an anchor.  The ingenuity of man could not have devised a stranger, a more enticing, a more overpoweringly fatal situation.  Fatal in that it could not be left untried!  Shefford gave in and clicked his teeth as he let himself go.  And suddenly he thought of her whom these bitter women called the Sago Lily.

The regret that had been his returned with thought of her.  The saddest disillusion of his life, the keenest disappointment, the strangest pain, would always be associated with her.  He had meant to see her face once, clear in the sunlight, so that he could always remember it, and then never go near her again.  And now it came to him that if he did see much of her these other women would find him like the stone wall in the valley.  Folly!  Perhaps it was, but she would be safe, maybe happier.  When he decided, it was certain that he trembled.