Chapter III: Part 3

“Down there was the first cross set up, many years ago, by a man who came here in a large boat moved by wings like the wings of a gull. The man had a white face and long hair the color of the sun. When he first landed he fell on his knees and then began to count a string of beads. Then he sang a song and called the other men, some of whom were Indians, from the boat. They cut down trees, and he made them set up a large cross at the foot of the bluff. Since then that strip of sand has been sacred, though the cross is gone and a new one is set here by our priest.”

The old squaw indicated with her stick the silver-colored relic behind Moses Nazagebic. Her guttural chant affected none of her hearers, except that Catharine frowned at a sight which could divert Moses. The Ottawas and Chippewas are a hard-featured people. Catharine was, perhaps, the handsomest product of an ill-favored village. Haggard pallor now encroached on the vermilion of her cheek. She wore an old hat of plaited bark pulled down to her eyes, and her strong black hair hung in two neglected braids. The patience of aboriginal womanhood was not stamped on her as it was on Lucy. A panther could look no fiercer than this lithe young Indian girl, whose bridal finery was hid in the house and whose banns had been published in the mission church.

Trying to grapple with the trouble of Moses Nazagebic and Catharine, the priest also stood gazing at the dock, where children usually played, tumbling in to swim or be drawn out, only more roseate for the bath. The children were now gathered in the grove or along the race-course. Nothing moved below except lapping water. It was seldom that these lake-going people left their landing-place so deserted. Gliding down from the north where the cliff had screened it from view, came a small schooner. The priest, shaded by his broad hat, watched the passing craft with barely conscious recognition of it as an object until handkerchiefs fluttered from the deck and startled him.

The tall silver-white cross was so conspicuous that any one standing near it must be observed. The priest shook his handkerchief in reply. He had many friends along the coast and among the islands. But his long sight caught some familiar guise which made him directly signal and entreat with wide peremptory sweeps of the arm.

“Moses,” commanded the priest, “you must unfasten a boat and go with me. There are people on board yonder that I want to see.”

No other man being at hand, the request was a natural one, and Moses had been used to responding to such needs of the priest. But he cast a quick look at the black robe and sat sullenly until a stern repetition compelled him.

The priest had continued his signals, and the schooner came about and waited. It was not a long pull. Moses, rowing with his back towards the schooner, watched the face of his spiritual father.

“That will do,” said the priest, and almost instantly some one on the schooner deck hailed him:

“Good-day, your reverence! What can we do for you?”

And another voice that Moses knew well shouted:

“Hello, Moses, is that you? Where's Frank? Did you get back all right with the sail-boat?”

The Indian cowered over his oars without answering or turning his head.

“I have come out,” answered the priest, “to satisfy myself that I really see you here alive. We heard you were shipwrecked and drowned in Lake Superior.”

“Shipwrecked, your reverence! What nonsense! We had a fine voyage and dismissed the men at the Sault. But since then we decided to make another cruise to the head of Lake Michigan, and hired another skipper. There is Moses in the boat with you, and Frank came home with him. They knew we were not shipwrecked.”

“Will you land at Cross Village?”

“No, your reverence. We only tacked in to salute the cross in passing.”

“But where shall I find you if I have urgent business with you?”

“At Little Traverse Bay. We cannot stop here.”

The schooner was drifting away broadside, and the voice of the speaker came across a widening swell of water. Then she came up into her course, cutting a breastwork of foam in front of her as she passed on southward. With pantomime salutations the priest and the two men who had hired Moses Nazagebic and Frank Chibam took leave of each other.

It had been a brief conference, but Moses rowed back a convicted criminal. He did not look at his conscience-keeper in the end of the boat. His high-cheeked face seemed to have had all individuality blotted out of it. Dazed and blear-eyed, he shipped his oars and tied the boat to its stake. A great noise of drumming and shouting came from the grove above, for the dances were soon to begin.

The steep road was a Calvary height to Moses. He dragged his feet as he climbed and stumbled in the deep sand; he who was so lithe of limb and nimble in any action. He had felt Catharine's eyes on his back like burning-glasses as he sat on the fence. They reflected on him now in one glare all the knowledge that the priest had gained of his crime. It was easier to follow to instant confession than to stay outside longer where Catharine could watch him. His wife's grandmother passed him, tapping along the fence and repeating again the legend of the first cross in Cross Village. Even in that day men who had slain their brothers were expected to give satisfaction to the tribe. It was either a life for a life or the labor of long hunting to solace a bereaved family.

He knelt down in the place where he had often confessed such little sins as lying or convivial drunkenness. How slight and innocent these offences seemed as the hopeless weight of this burden crushed him. The stern yet compassionate face over him exacted every word.

The priest remembered that this had not been a bad Chippewa. He had lived a steady, honest life in his humble station, keeping the three women well provided with such comforts as they needed; he had fished, he had labored at wood-chopping, and in the season helped Lucy fill her birch-bark mococks with maple sugar for sale at the larger settlements. The anguish of Cain was in the man's eyes. Natural life and he had already parted company. The teeth showed between his relaxed lips.

“Moses Nazagebic,” said the priest, disregarding formula and dealing with the primitive sinner, “what have you done with Frank Chibam?”

“Father, I kill him.”

The brief English which the Indian men mastered and used in their trading at the settlements was Moses' refuge in confession. To profane his native language with his crime seemed the last enormity of all.

“It was a lie that there was a wreck in Lake Superior?”

“Yes, father.”

“It was a lie that you lost your sail-boat?”

“Yes, father.”

“Did you intend to kill Frank?”

Moses swallowed as if his throat were closing.

“No—no! We both drunk. We quarrel; Frank sitting on edge of boat. I come up behind and hit him with oar. I knock him into the water.”

“This was after the white men left you?”

“Yes, father. We have our money. We get drunk at Sault.”

“Where is his body?”

“In St. Mary's River. Not far above Drummond Island.”

“Are you sure he was drowned?”

“Oh, sure!” Moses' jaw dropped. “Frank he go down like a stone; and his spirit follow me ever since. His spirit tell Catharine. His spirit drive these men back so Cross Village know the truth. Good name, Chibam—that mean spirit. It follow me all the time. I get no rest till that spirit satisfied.”

“My unhappy son, you must confess and give yourself up to justice.”

“Justice no good. Justice hang. Frank Chibam want me go down like stone. Frank Chibam drive me back where he went down. But I not have my boat. Next thing Frank Chibam send me boat.”

“What did you do with Frank's and yours?”

“I leave it at Drummond Island, with Chippewa there; and tell him to give it to nobody but Frank Chibam. I never set foot on that boat again—Frank's spirit angrier there than anywhere else.”

“But how did you come home?”

“I get other Chippewa at Drummond to bring me to Mackinac. Then I get Chippewa at Mackinac to bring me to Cross Village. I tell last Chippewa I had a shipwreck. After Frank drowned I not know what to do. I had to come home. I thought if I said the boat was wrecked my people might believe me. I have to see Lucy.” His bloodshot eyes piteously sought the compassion of his confessor. One moment's lapse into a brutal frenzy which now seemed some other man's had changed all things for him.

Never before had penitent come to that closet in such despair. Moses had repented through what seemed to him a long nightmare of succeeding days. There was no hope for him. He was called a Christian Indian, but the white man's consolations and ideas of retribution were not the red man's.

He heard the priest arrange a journey for him to give himself up to the law. The priest was a wise man, but this was uselessly clogging the wheels of fate. He did not want to sit in a jail with Frank Chibam's spirit. Such company was bad enough in the open sunlight. It was plain that neither Frank nor Catharine would be appeased by any offering short of their full measure of vengeance.

Having settled it that Moses' penance for his crime must be to give himself up to the law, the priest left him in the chapel and went out to press some sail-boat into service. It would be almost impossible to take any Indian from the festivities. The death of the most agile dancer and the withdrawal of the most ardent horse-racer had very mildly checked the usual joy.

Moses in his broken state was, perhaps, capable of sailing a boat, but it would be wiser to have another skipper aboard in crossing the strait to Mackinac.

It was fortunate, on the other hand, that the fête had prevented fishermen from hailing the passing schooner. The men were known by all the villagers, having stayed at the Cross Village inn, a place scarcely larger than a Chippewa cabin, kept by the only white family. These tribe remnants were gentle in their semi-civilization, yet the priest dreaded to think what might become of Moses if they discovered his lie and denied him the indulgence accorded to accidental man-killers.

To borrow a sail-boat would be easy enough while sympathy lasted for his penitent. He remembered also that Lucy could help sail it, and it would be best to take her to Mackinac for the parting with her husband.

The cross was stretching its afternoon shadow, and wind sweet with the moisture of many tossing blue miles flowed across the bluff. There never had been a fairer day for the yearly dances. Under his trouble the priest was conscious of trivial self-reproach that he had not told the passers it was fête day. But he reflected that few could love this remote little aboriginal world as he loved it, in joy or tragedy. The glamour of the North was over it through every season. At bleak January-end, in wastes of snow, the small houses were sealed and glowing with fires, and sledges creaked on the crust, while the shout of Indian children could be heard. Then the ice-boat shot out on the closed strait above and veered like a spirit from point to point, almost silent and terribly swift. On mornings after there had been a dry mist from the lake, this whole world was bridal-white, every twig loaded with frost blooms, until the far-reaching glory gave it a tropical beauty and lavishness and the frost fell like showers of flower petals.

His people stood respectfully out of his way as he entered the grove. The “throb, throb” and “pat, pat” of drum and feet were farther off, where young men were dancing in a ring. He could see their lithe bodies sway between tree boles. Old squaws sat with knees up to their chins, and old men smoked, pressing close to the spectacle. The priest was sensitive enough to feel a stir of uneasiness at his invasion of the aboriginal temple, and he was not long in having a boat put at his disposal.

The next thing was to induce Moses and Lucy to accompany him quietly down to the dock. He spoke to Lucy at her door. She sat in dull dejection, her basket-work and supply of sweet grass on the floor beside her.

“Come, Lucy! I have business in Mackinac, and Moses and you must take me there.”

“Did that schooner bring you news, father?”

“Yes.”

“But it is late.”

“We may remain there to-night. Take such things with you as your husband might need for a week.”

Lucy obediently put her basket-work away and prepared for the journey. She was conscious of triumph over Catharine, from whom the priest was about to rescue Moses. She put on her best sweet-grass hat and made up her bundle.

The priest brought Moses out of the chapel with a pity and tenderness that touched Lucy, and the three went down the steep road. Her grandmother was sitting in the sun by the gable and did not notice them. The old woman was telling herself the story of Nanabojou. The sail-boat which they were to take was anchored off the end of the dock. Moses rowed out after it and brought it alongside. He was busy raising the sails and the priest and Lucy had already taken their seats when the little craft answered to a light bound over the stern, and Catharine sat resolutely down, looking at Moses Nazagebic.

Moses let the sails fall and leaped out. He tied the rope to the dock.

“Get into the boat again, Moses!” commanded the priest. “And Catharine, you go back!”

Moses shook his head. His spirit was broken, but it was a physical impossibility for him to sail a boat to Mackinac with Catharine aboard.

The priest knew he might as well attempt to control gulls. French clamor or Anglo-Saxon brutality would be easy to persuade or compel, in comparison with this dense aboriginal silence. He took patience and sat still, reading his breviary. The boat ground softly against logs, and Lucy hugged her bundle, determined on the journey. Moses remained with his back to them, dangling his legs over the end of the dock. Catharine kept her place, grasping the edges of the craft. It was plain if Moses Nazagebic went to Mackinac it would be in the hands of officers sent to bring him at a later period. So the day dropped down in splendor, lake and sky becoming one dazzle of gold so bright the eye might not dwell on it. The party of four returned, and Catharine walked last up the hill. Religion and penance were nothing to a Chippewa girl who had distinct intentions of vengeance.

She kept an eye on her victim while she milked the cows as they came from the woods to keep their nightly appointment. The priest owned some lack in himself that he could not better handle the destinies around him. They hurt him, as rock would bruise tender flesh.

Barbaric instrumentation and shouting did not keep him awake after darkness closed in. He would have lain awake if a dog had not stirred in Cross Village. He heard the wind change and strike the east side of his house with gusts of rain. Fires must die down to wet ashes in the grove. He knew the cross stood white and tall in scudding mist, and on the crosses in the cemetery chaplets and flowers made of white rags hung bedraggled. He foresaw the kind of day which would open before his poor penitent and be a symbol of the life that was to follow.

It was the priest himself who introduced Moses to this day, opening the door and standing unheeding under the overflow of the eaves. The hiss of rain could be heard, and daylight penetrated reluctantly abroad. Moses sat drooped forward with his elbows on his knees by the open fire. Lucy hurried to answer the summons, believing the priest had found some new haven for Moses while her cousin was out of the house.

But there stood Catharine behind the priest, the spell of her fierceness broken, and at her side was Frank Chibam, undrowned and amiably grinning, his dark red skin stung by the weather, indeed, but otherwise little changed by water.

“Tell Moses I want him!” said the priest. “And Catharine, you go into the house!”

This time Catharine nimbly obeyed. As for Lucy, she made no outcry. She merely satisfied herself it was Frank Chibam before hurrying her husband to the spectacle.

Moses stepped out bareheaded into the rain, and his jaw dropped. The priest closed the door behind him.

Frank took his hand. Moses felt the young man's firm sinew and muscle. He looked piteously at the priest, his head sagging to one side, his face working in a spasm.

“I should have prepared him, Frank. This comes too suddenly on him.”

They took Moses between them and walked with him along the fence at the foot of the cross. The raindrops moved down his face like tears. He did not speak, but listened with a child's intentness, first to one and then to the other, leaning his arm on his partner's shoulder.

“I don't understand why he was so certain he had killed you, Frank. He told me he struck you with an oar and saw you go down in the water like a stone.”

“Whiskey, father,” explained Frank in trader's brief English. “Plenty very bad whiskey. It make me sick for a week. The boom knocked us both down, and I fell into the water. The fisherman from one of the little islands who pull me out say that. Moses, he drunker than me; he too drunk to bring the boat home.”

“The poor fellow told lies to cover the crime he thought he had committed. He has suffered, Frank. And I have suffered. We will say nothing about Catharine. Why didn't you come sooner?”

“I take the boat and go fishing. I say, 'Moses, that lazy Chippewa, leave the boat for me to bring home; I make him wait for it.’”

“Did you quarrel at all?”

“Maybe so,” said Frank. “Whiskey not let you remember much. But I could kill Moses easier than he could kill me.”

“He has suffered enough. But you, my son, ought to do heavy penance.”

“Not put off wedding?” suggested Frank, uneasily.

“I had not thought of unusual methods; it might be good discipline for Catharine, too. But we have lost enough cheer on your account.”

“I never spend my money for whiskey any more, father. If some man ask me to take a drink, I drink with him, but not get drunk—no.”

Moses laughed, his face shortening in horizontal lines.

“That Frank Chibam. Frank make me pay for all the whiskey. He not drowned. I not kill him. His spirit only an evil dream.”

“The evil dream is now past, Moses,” said the priest.

“Wake up, my brother!” said Frank in Chippewa. “I have a boatful of fish. You must come and help me with them. The good father will go back to his books when he sees you are yourself once more.”

Under the rain-cloud the lake had turned to blue-black velvet water pricked with thousands of tossing white-caps. Near shore it seemed full of submerged smoke. And the rack tore itself, dragging low across the west. Moses, remembering the last sunset and its sickening splendors, felt that he had never seen so fine a day. He worked bareheaded and with his sleeves above his elbows among the fish. Gulls were flying, each making a burnished white glare against that background of weather. Looking up, the Chippewa could see the cross at the top of the bluff, standing over him in holy benediction. He felt lighter-bodied than a gull. And the anguish of that wretch who had sat on the fence believing himself a murderer was forgotten.

In the house his wife was exacting what in elder times would have been typified by an intricate piece of wampum, from her repentant cousin. Catharine brought in wood and carried water. Catharine was not permitted to make the great fish-pie, but could only look on. She served humbly. She had wronged her kinspeople by evil suspicion, and must make atonement. No words were lost between her and Lucy. She must lay her hand upon her mouth and be tasked until the elder woman was appeased. It was not the way of civilized women, but it was the aboriginal scheme, which the priest found good.

Lucy was not yet ready to demand the truth about the two white men and the shipwrecked boat. Her entire mind was given to humbling Catharine and impressing upon that forward young squaw that her husband was in no way accountable for the disappearance and vagrancy of Frank Chibam.

The grandmother basked at the hearth corner while this silent retribution went on unseen. She was repeating again the story of the first cross in Cross Village. She did not know that anything had happened in the house.

THE KING OF BEAVER

Success was the word most used by the King of Beaver. Though he stood before his people as a prophet assuming to speak revelations, executive power breathed from him. He was a tall, golden-tinted man with a head like a dome, hair curling over his ears, and soft beard and mustache which did not conceal a mouth cut thin and straight. He had student hands, long and well kept. It was not his dress, though that was careful as a girl's, which set him apart from farmers listening on the benches around him, but the keen light of his blue eyes, wherein shone the master.

Emeline thought she had never before seen such a man. He had an attraction which she felt loathsome, and the more so because it drew some part of her irresistibly to him. Her spirit was kin to his, and she resented that kinship, trying to lose herself among farmers' wives and daughters, who listened to their Prophet stolidly, and were in no danger of being naturally selected by him. This moral terror Emeline could not have expressed in words, and she hid it like a shame. She also resented the subservience of her kinspeople to one no greater than herself. Her stock had been masters of men.

As the King of Beaver slowly turned about the circle he encountered this rebel defying his assumption, and paused in his speaking a full minute, the drowsy farmers seeing merely that notes were being shifted and rearranged on the table. Then he began again, the dictatorial key transposed into melody. His covert message was to the new maid in the congregation. She might struggle like a fly in a web. He wrapped her around and around with beautiful sentences. As Speaker of the State Legislature he had learned well how to handle men in the mass, but nature had doubly endowed him for entrancing women. The spiritual part of James Strang, King and Prophet of a peculiar sect, appealed to the one best calculated to appreciate him during the remainder of his exhortation.

The Tabernacle, to which Beaver Island Mormons gathered every Saturday instead of every Sunday, was yet unfinished. Its circular shape and vaulted ceiling, panelled in the hard woods of the island, had been planned by the man who stood in the centre. Many openings under the eaves gaped windowless; but the congregation, sheltered from a July sun, enjoyed freely the lake air, bringing fragrance from their own fields and gardens. They seemed a bovine, honest people, in homespun and hickory; and youth, bright-eyed and fresh-cheeked, was not lacking. They sat on benches arranged in circles around a central platform which held the Prophet's chair and table. This was his simple plan for making his world revolve around him.

Roxy Cheeseman, Emeline's cousin, was stirred to restlessness by the Prophet's unusual manner, and shifted uneasily on the bench. Her short, scarlet-cheeked face made her a favorite among the young men. She had besides this attraction a small waist and foot, and a father who was very well off indeed for a Beaver Island farmer. Roxy's black eyes, with the round and unwinking stare of a bird's, were fixed on King Strang, as if she instinctively warded off a gaze which by swerving a little could smite her.

But the Prophet paid no attention to any one when the meeting was over, his custom being to crush his notes in one hand at the end of his peroration, and to retire like a priest, leaving the dispersing congregation awed by his rapt face.

The two cousins walked sedately along the street of St. James village, while their elders lingered about the Tabernacle door shaking hands. That primitive settlement of the early '50's consisted of a few houses and log stores, a mill, the Tabernacle, and long docks, at which steamers touched perhaps once a week. The forest partially encircled it. A few Gentiles, making Saturday purchases in a shop kept by one of their own kind, glanced with dislike at the separating Mormons. The shouts of Gentile children could also be heard at Saturday play. Otherwise a Sabbath peacefulness was over the landscape. Beaver Island had not a rugged coast-line, though the harbor of St. James was deep and good. Land rose from it in gentle undulations rather than hills.

Emeline and Roxy walked inland, with their backs to the harbor. In summer, farmers who lived nearest St. James took short-cuts through the woods to meeting, and let their horses rest.

The last house on the street was a wooden building of some pretension, having bow-windows and a veranda. High pickets enclosed a secluded garden. It was very unlike the log-cabins of the island.

“He lives here,” said Roxy.

Emeline did not inquire who lived here. She understood, and her question was—

“How many with him?”

“All of them—eight. Seven of them stay at home, but Mary French travels with him. Didn't you notice her in the Tabernacle—the girl with the rose in her hair, sitting near the platform?”

“Yes, I noticed her. Was that one of his wives?”

Roxy waited until they had struck into the woods path, and then looked guardedly behind her.

“Mary French is the youngest one. She was sealed to the Prophet only two years ago; and last winter she went travelling with him, and we heard she dressed in men's clothes and acted as his secretary.”

“But why did she do that when she was his wife according to your religion?”

“I don't know,” responded Roxy, mysteriously. “The Gentiles on the mainland are very hard on us.”

They followed the track between fragrant grape-vine and hickory, and the girl bred to respect polygamy inquired—

“Do you feel afraid of the Prophet, Cousin Emeline?”

“No, I don't,” retorted the girl bred to abhor it.

“Sometimes I do. He makes people do just what he wants them to. Mary French was a Gentile's daughter, the proudest girl that ever stepped in St. James. She didn't live on the island; she came here to visit. And he got her. What's the matter, Cousin Emeline?”

“Some one trod on my grave; I shivered. Cousin Roxy, I want to ask you a plain question. Do you like a man's having more than one wife?”

“No, I don't. And father doesn't either. But he was obliged to marry again, or get into trouble with the other elders. And Aunt Mahala is very good about the house, and minds mother. The revelation may be plain enough, but I am not the kind of a girl,” declared Roxy, daringly, as one might blaspheme, “that cares a straw for the revelation.”

Emeline took hold of her arm, and they walked on with a new sense of companionship.

“A great many of the people feel the same way about it. But when the Prophet makes them understand it is part of the faith, they have to keep the faith. I am a reprobate myself. But don't tell father,” appealed Roxy, uneasily. “He is an elder.”

“My uncle Cheeseman is a good man,” said Emeline, finding comfort in this fact. She could not explain to her cousin how hard it had been for her to come to Beaver Island to live among Mormons. Her uncle had insisted on giving his orphan niece a home and the protection of a male relative, at the death of the maiden aunt by whom she had been brought up. In that day no girl thought of living without protection. Emeline had a few thousand dollars of her own, but her money was invested, and he could not count on the use of it, which men assumed a right to have when helpless women clustered to their hearths. Her uncle Cheeseman was undeniably a good man, whatever might be said of his religious faith.

“I like father myself,” assented Roxy. “He is never strict with us unless the Prophet has some revelation that makes him so. Cousin Emeline, I hope you won't grow to be taken up with Brother Strang, like Mary French. I thought he looked at you to-day.”

Emeline's face and neck were scarlet above her black dress. The Gentile resented as an insult what the Mormon simply foreboded as distasteful to herself; though there was not a family of that faith on the island who would not have felt honored in giving a daughter to the Prophet.

“I hate him!” exclaimed Emeline, her virgin rage mingled with a kind of sweet and sickening pain. “I'll never go to his church again.”

“Father wouldn't like that, Cousin Emeline,” observed Roxy, though her heart leaped to such unshackled freedom. “He says we mustn't put our hand to the plough and turn back. Everybody knows that Brother Strang is the only person who can keep the Gentiles from driving us off the island. They have persecuted us ever since the settlement was made. But they are afraid of him. They cannot do anything with him. As long as he lives he is better than an army to keep our lands and homes for us.”

“You are in a hard case betwixt Gentiles and Prophet,” laughed Emeline.

Yet the aspects of life on Beaver Island keenly interested her. This small world, fifteen miles in length by six in breadth, was shut off by itself in Lake Michigan, remote from the civilization of towns. She liked at first to feel cut loose from her past life, and would have had the steamers touch less often at St. James, diminishing their chances of bringing her hateful news.

There were only two roads on the island—one extending from the harbor town in the north end to a village called Galilee at the extreme southeast end, the other to the southwest shore. Along these roads farms were laid out, each about eighty rods in width and a mile or two in length, so that neighbors dwelt within call of one another, and the colony presented a strong front. The King of Beaver could scarcely have counselled a better division of land for the linking of families. On one side of the Cheesemans had dwelt an excellent widow with a bag chin, and she became Elder Cheeseman's second wife. On the other side were the Wentworths, and Billy Wentworth courted Roxy across the fence until it appeared that wives might continue passing over successive boundary lines.

The billowy land was green in the morning as paradise, and Emeline thought every day its lights and shadows were more beautiful than the day before. Life had paused in her, and she was glad to rest her eyes on the horizon line and take no thought about any morrow. She helped her cousin and her legal and Mormon aunts with the children and the cabin labor, trying to adapt herself to their habits. But her heart-sickness and sense of fitting in her place like a princess cast among peasants put her at a disadvantage when, the third evening, the King of Beaver came into the garden.

He chose that primrose time of day when the world and the human spirit should be mellowest, and walked with the farmer between garden beds to where Emeline and Roxy were tending flowers. The entire loamy place sent up incense. Emeline had felt at least sheltered and negatively happy until his voice modulations strangely pierced her, and she looked up and saw him.

He called her uncle Brother Cheeseman and her uncle called him Brother Strang, but on one side was the mien of a sovereign and on the other the deference of a subject. Again Emeline's blood rose against him, and she took as little notice as she dared of the introduction.

The King of Beaver talked to Roxy. Billy Wentworth came to the line fence and made a face at seeing him helping to tie up sweet-peas. Then Billy climbed over and joined Emeline. They exchanged looks, and each knew the mind of the other on the subject of the Prophet.

Billy was a good safe human creature, with the tang of the soil about him, and no wizard power of making his presence felt when one's back was turned. Emeline kept her gray eyes directed towards him, and talked about his day's work and the trouble of ploughing with oxen. She was delicately and sensitively made, with a beauty which came and went like flame. Her lips were formed in scarlet on a naturally pale face. Billy Wentworth considered her weakly. He preferred the robust arm outlined by Roxy's homespun sleeve. And yet she had a sympathetic knowledge of men which he felt, without being able to describe, as the most delicate flattery.

The King of Beaver approached Emeline. She knew she could not escape the interview, and continued tying vines to the cedar palisades while the two young islanders drew joyfully away to another part of the garden. The stable and barn-yard were between garden and cabin. Long variegated fields stretched off in bands. A gate let through the cedar pickets to a pasture where the cows came up to be milked. Bees gathering to their straw domes for the night made a purring hum at the other end of the garden.

“I trust you are here to stay,” said Emeline's visitor.

“I am never going back to Detroit,” she answered. He understood at once that she had met grief in Detroit, and that it might be other grief than the sort expressed by her black garment.

“We will be kind to you here.”

Emeline, finishing her task, glanced over her shoulder at him. She did not know how tantalizingly her face, close and clear in skin texture as the petal of a lily, flashed out her dislike. A heavier woman's rudeness in her became audacious charm.

“I like Beaver Island,” she remarked, winding the remaining bits of string into a ball. “‘Every prospect pleases, and only man is vile.’”

“You mean Gentile man,” said King Strang. “He is vile, but we hope to get rid of him some time.”

“By breaking his fish-nets and stealing his sail-boats? Is it true that a Gentile sail-boat was sunk in Lake Galilee and kept hidden there until inquiry ceased, and then was raised, repainted, and launched again, a good Mormon boat?”

He linked his hands behind him and smiled at her daring.

“How many evil stories you have heard about us! My dear young lady, I could rejoin with truths about our persecutions. Is your uncle Cheeseman a malefactor?”

“My uncle Cheeseman is a good man.”

“So are all my people. The island, like all young communities, is infested with a class of camp-followers, and every depredation of these fellows is charged to us. But we shall make it a garden—we shall make it a garden.”

“Let me train vines over the whipping-post in your garden,” suggested Emeline, turning back the crimson edge of her lip.

“You have heard that a man was publicly whipped on Beaver Island—and he deserved it. Have you heard also that I myself have been imprisoned by outsiders, and my life attempted more than once? Don't you know that in war a leader must be stern if he would save his people from destruction? Have you never heard a good thing of me, my child?”

Emeline, facing her adversary, was enraged at the conviction which the moderation and gentleness of a martyr was able to work in her.

“Oh yes, indeed, I have heard one good thing of you—your undertaking the salvation of eight or nine wives.”

“Not yet nine,” he responded, humorously. “And I am glad you mentioned that. It is one of our mysteries that you will learn later. You have helped me greatly by such a candid unburdening of your mind. For you must know that you and I are to be more to each other than strangers. The revelation was given to you when it was given to me in the Tabernacle. I saw that.”

The air was thickening with dusky motes. Emeline fancied that living dark atoms were pressing down upon her from infinity.

“You must know,” she said, with determination, “that I came to Beaver Island because I hated men, and expected to see nothing but Mormons here—”

“Not counting them men at all,” indulgently supplemented the King of Beaver, conscious that she was struggling in the most masculine presence she had ever encountered. He dropped his voice. “My child, you touch me as no one has touched me yet. There is scarcely need of words between us. I know what I am to you. You shall not stay on the island if you do not wish it. Oh, you are going to make me do my best!”

“I wish you would go away!”

“Some Gentile has hurt you, and you are beating your bruised strength on me.”

“Please go away! I don't like you. I am bound to another man.”

“You are bound to nobody but me. I have waited a lifetime for you.”

“How dare you talk so to me when you have eight wives already!”

“Solomon had a thousand. He was a man of God, though never in his life was there a moment when he took to his breast a mate. I shall fare better.”

“Did you talk to them all like this?”

“Ask them. They have their little circles beyond which they cannot go. Have you thoughts in common with your cousin Roxy?”

“Yes, very many,” asserted Emeline, doggedly. “I am just like Cousin Roxy.”

“You have no mind beyond the milking and churning, the sewing and weaving?”

“No, I have no mind beyond them.”

“I kiss your hands—these little hands that were made to the finest uses of life, and that I shall fill with honors.”

“Don't touch me,” warned Emeline. “They can scratch!”

The King of Beaver laughed aloud. With continued gentleness he explained to her: “You will come to me. Gentile brutes may chase women like savages, and maltreat them afterwards; but it is different with you and me.” He brought his hands forward and folded them upright on his breast. “I have always prayed this prayer alone and as a solitary soul at twilight. For the first time I shall speak it aloud in the presence of one who has often thought the same prayer: O God, since Thou hast shut me up in this world, I will do the best I can, without fear or favor. When my task is done, let me out!”

He turned and left her, as if this had been a benediction on their meeting, and went from the garden as he usually went from the Tabernacle. Emeline's heart and eyes seemed to overflow without any volition of her own. It was a kind of spiritual effervescence which she could not control. She sobbed two or three times aloud, and immediately ground her teeth at his back as it passed out of sight. Billy and Roxy were so free from the baleful power that selected her. They could chat in peace under the growing darkness, they who had home and families, while she, without a relative except those on Beaver Island, or a friend whose duty it was to shelter her, must bear the shock of that ruinous force.

The instinct that no one could help her but herself kept her silent when she retired with Roxy to the loft-chamber. Primitive life on Beaver Island settled to its rest soon after the birds, and there was not a sound outside of nature's stirrings till morning, unless some drunken fishermen trailed down the Galilee road to see what might be inflicted on the property of sleeping Mormons.

The northern air blew fresh through gable windows of the attic, yet Emeline turned restlessly on her straw bed, and counted the dim rafters while Roxy slept. Finally she could not lie still, and slipped cautiously out of bed, feeling dire need to be abroad, running or riding with all her might. She leaned out of a gable window, courting the moist chill of the starless night. While the hidden landscape seemed strangely dear to her, she was full of unspeakable homesickness and longing for she knew not what—a life she had not known and could not imagine, some perfect friend who called her silently through space and was able to lift her out of the entanglements of existence.

The regular throbbing of a horse's feet approaching along the road at a brisk walk became quite distinct. Emeline's sensations were suspended while she listened. From the direction of St. James she saw a figure on horseback coming between the dusky parallel fence rows. The sound of walking ceased in front of the house, and presently another sound crept barely as high as the attic window. It was the cry of a violin, sweet and piercing, like some celestial voice. It took her unawares. She fled from it to her place beside Roxy and covered her ears with the bedclothes.

Roxy turned with a yawn and aroused from sleep. She rose to her elbow and drew in her breath, giggling. The violin courted like an angel, finding secret approaches to the girl who lay rigid with her ears stopped.

“Cousin Emeline!” whispered Roxy, “do you hear that?”

“What is it?” inquired Emeline, revealing no emotion.

“It's Brother Strang serenading.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he is the only man on Beaver who can play the fiddle like that.” Roxy gave herself over to unrestrained giggling. “A man fifty years old!”

“I don't believe it,” responded Emeline, sharply.

“Don't believe he is nearly fifty? He told his age to the elders.”

“I haven't a word of praise for him, but he isn't an old man. He doesn't look more than thirty-five.”

“To hear that fiddle you'd think he wasn't twenty,” chuckled Roxy. “It's the first time Brother Strang ever came serenading down this road.”

He did not stay long, but went, trailing music deliciously into the distance. Emeline knew how he rode, with the bridle looped over his bow arm. She was quieted and lay in peace, sinking to sleep almost before the faint, far notes could no longer be heard.

From that night her uncle Cheeseman's family changed their attitude towards her. She felt it as a withdrawal of intimacy, though it expressed reverential awe. Especially did her Mormon aunt Mahala take little tasks out of her hands and wait upon her, while her legal aunt looked at her curiously. It was natural for Roxy to talk to Billy Wentworth across the fence, but it was not natural for them to share so much furtive laughter, which ceased when Emeline approached. Uncle Cheeseman himself paid more attention to his niece and spent much time at the table explaining to her the Mormon situation on Beaver Island, tracing the colony back to its secession from Brigham Young's party in Illinois.

“Brother Strang was too large for them,” said her uncle. “He can do anything he undertakes to do.”

The next Saturday Emeline refused to go to the Tabernacle. She gave no reason and the family asked for none. Her caprices were as the gambols of the paschal lamb, to be indulged and overlooked. Roxy offered to stay with her, but she rejected companionship, promising her uncle and aunts to lock herself within the cabin and hide if she saw men approaching from any direction. The day was sultry for that climate, and of a vivid clearness, and the sky dazzled. Emeline had never met any terrifying Gentiles during her stay on the island, and she felt quite secure in crossing the pasture and taking to the farm woods beyond. Her uncle's cows had worn a path which descended to a run with partially grass-lined channel. Beaver Island was full of brooks and springs. The children had placed stepping-stones across this one. She was vaguely happy, seeing the water swirl below her feet, hearing the cattle breathe at their grazing; though in the path or on the log which she found at the edge of the woods her face kept turning towards the town of St. James, as the faces of the faithful turn towards Mecca. It was childish to think of escaping the King of Beaver by merely staying away from his exhortations. Emeline knew she was only parleying.

The green silence should have helped her to think, but she found herself waiting—and doing nothing but waiting—for what might happen next. She likened herself to a hunted rabbit palpitating in cover, unable to reach any place of safety yet grateful for a moment's breathing. Wheels rolled southward along the Galilee road. Meeting was out. She had the caprice to remain where she was when the family wagon arrived, for it had been too warm to walk to the Tabernacle. Roxy's voice called her, and as she answered, Roxy skipped across the brook and ran to her.

“Cousin Emeline,” the breathless girl announced, “here comes Mary French to see you!”

Emeline stiffened upon the log.

“Where?”

Roxy glanced behind at a figure following her across the meadow.

“What does she want of me?” inquired Emeline. “If she came home with the family, it was not necessary to call me.”

“She drove by herself. She says Brother Strang sent her to you.”

Emeline stood up as the Prophet's youngest wife entered that leafy silence. Roxy, forgetting that these two had never met before, slipped away and left them. They looked at each other.

“How do you do, Mrs. Strang?” spoke Emeline.

“How do you do, Miss Cheeseman?” spoke Mary French.

“Will you sit down on this log?”

“Thank you.”

Mary French had more flesh and blood than Emeline. She was larger and of a warmer and browner tint—that type of brunette with startling black hair which breaks into a floss of little curls, and with unexpected blue eyes. Her full lips made a bud, and it only half bloomed when she smiled. From crown to slipper she was a ripe and supple woman. Though clad, like Emeline, in black, her garment was a transparent texture over white, and she held a parasol with crimson lining behind her head. She had left her bonnet in her conveyance.

“My husband,” said Mary French, quiet and smiling, “sent me to tell you that you will be welcomed into our family.”

Emeline looked her in the eyes. The Prophet's wife had the most unblenching smiling gaze she had ever encountered.

“I do not wish to enter your family. I am not a Mormon.”

“He will make you wish it. I was not a Mormon.”

They sat silent, the trees stirring around them.

“I do not understand it,” said Emeline. “How can you come to me with such a message?”

“I can do it as you can do it when your turn comes.”

Emeline looked at Mary French as if she had been stabbed.

“It hurts, doesn't it?” said Mary French. “But wait till he seems to you a great strong archangel—an archangel with only the weakness of dabbling his wings in the dirt—and you will withhold from him nothing, no one, that may be of use to him. If he wants to put me by for a while, it is his will. You cannot take my place. I cannot fill yours.”

“Oh, don't!” gasped Emeline. “I am not that sort of woman—I should kill!”

“That is because you have not lived with him. I would rather have him make me suffer than not have him at all.”

“Oh, don't! I can't bear it! Help me!” prayed Emeline, stretching her hands to the wife.

Mary French met her with one hand and the unflinching smile. Her flesh was firm and warm, while Emeline's was cold and quivering.

“You have never loved anybody, have you?”

“No.”

“But you have thought you did?”

“I was engaged before I came here.”

“And the engagement is broken?”

“We quarrelled.”

Mary French breathed deeply.

“You will forget it here. He can draw the very soul out of your body.”

“He cannot!” flashed Emeline.

“Some one will kill him yet. He is not understood at his best, and he cannot endure defeat of any kind. When you come into the family you must guard him from his enemies as I have constantly guarded him. If you ever let a hair of his head be harmed—then I shall hate you!”

“Mrs. Strang, do you come here to push me too? My uncle's family, everything, all are closing around me! Why don't you help me? I loathe—I loathe your husband!”

Mary French rose, her smile changing only to express deep tenderness.

“You are a good girl, dear. I can myself feel your charm. I was not so self-denying. In my fierce young girlhood I would have removed a rival. But since you ask me, I will do all I can for you in the way you desire. My errand is done. Good-by.”

“Good-by,” said Emeline, restraining herself.

She sat watching the elastic shape under the parasol move with its shadow across the field. She had not a doubt until Mary French was gone; then the deep skill of the Prophet's wife with rivals sprung out like a distortion of nature.

Emeline had nearly three weeks in which to intrench herself with doubts and defences. She felt at first surprised and relieved. When her second absence from the Tabernacle was passed over in silence she found in her nature an unaccountable pique, which steadily grew to unrest. She ventured and turned back on the woods path leading to St. James many times, each time daring farther. The impulse to go to St. James came on her at waking, and she resisted through busy hours of the day. But the family often had tasks from which Emeline was free, and when the desire grew unendurable she knelt at her secluded bedside in the loft, trying to bring order out of her confused thoughts. She reviewed her quarrel with her lover, and took blame for his desertion. The grievance which had seemed so great to her before she came to Beaver Island dwindled, and his personality with it. In self-defence she coaxed her fancy, pretending that James Arnold was too good for her. It was well he had found it out. But because he was too good for her she ought to go on being fond of him at a safe distance, undetected by him, and discreetly cherishing his large blond image as her ideal of manhood. If she had not been bred in horror of Catholics, the cloister at this time would have occurred to her as her only safe refuge.

These secret rites in her bedroom being ended, and Roxy diverted from her movements, she slipped off into the woods path, sometimes running breathlessly towards St. James.

The impetus which carried Emeline increased with each journey. At first she was able to check it in the woods depths, but it finally drove her until the village houses were in sight.

When this at last happened, and she stood gazing, fascinated, down the tunnel of forest path, the King of Beaver spoke behind her.

Emeline screamed in terror and took hold of a bush, to make it a support and a veil.

“Have I been a patient man?” he inquired, standing between her and her uncle's house. “I waited for you to come to me.”

“I am obliged to go somewhere,” said Emeline, plucking the leaves and unsteadily shifting her eyes about his feet. “I cannot stay on the farm all the time.” Through numbness she felt the pricking of a sharp rapture.

The King of Beaver smiled, seeing betrayed in her face the very vertigo of joy.