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 coastline, 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 grapevine 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 Went-worths, 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 sailboats? 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-follow-ers, 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 Cheese-man 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.

“You will give yourself to me now?” he winningly begged, venturing out-stretched hands. “You have felt the need as I have? Do you think the days have been easy to me? When you were on your knees I was on my knees too. Every day you came in this direction I came as far as I dared, to meet you. Are the obstacles all passed?”

“No,” said Emeline.

He was making her ask herself that most insidious question, “Why could not the other have been like this?”

“Tell me—can you say, 'I hate you,' now?”

“No,” said Emeline.

“I have grown to be a better man since you said you hated me. The miracle cannot be forced. Next time?” He spoke wistfully.

“No,” Emeline answered, holding to the bush. She kept her eyes on the ground while he talked, and glanced up when she replied. He stood with his hat off. The flakes of sun touched his head and the fair skin of his forehead.

He moved towards Emeline, and she retreated around the bush. Without hesitating he passed, making a salutation, and went on by himself to St. James. She watched his rapid military walk furtively, her eyebrows crouching, her lips rippling with passionate tremors. Then she took to flight homeward, her skirts swishing through the woods with a rush like the wind. The rebound was as violent as the tension had been.

There were few festivities on Beaver Island, the Mormon families living a pastoral life, many of them yet taxed by the struggle for existence. Crops shot up rank and strong in the short Northern summer. Soft cloud masses sailed over the island, and rain-storms marched across it with drums of thunder which sent reverberations along the water world. Or fogs rolled in, muffling and obliterating homesteads.

Emeline stayed in the house, busying herself with the monotonous duties of the family three days. She was determined never to go into the woods path again without Roxy. The fourth day a gray fog gave her no choice but imprisonment. It had the acrid tang of smoke from fires burning on the mainland. About nightfall the west wind rose and blew it back, revealing a land mantled with condensed drops.

Emeline put on her hat and shawl to walk around in the twilight. The other young creatures of the house were glad to be out also, and Roxy and Roxy's lover talked across the fence. Emeline felt fortified against the path through the woods at night; yet her feet turned in that direction, and as certainly as water seeks its level she found herself on the moist elastic track. Cow-bells on the farm sounded fainter and farther. A gloom of trees massed around her, and the forest gave up all its perfume to the dampness.

At every step she meant to turn back, though a recklessness of night and of meeting the King of Beaver grew upon her. Thus, without any reasonable excuse for her presence there, she met Mary French.

“Is that you, Miss Cheeseman?” panted the Prophet's youngest wife.

Emeline confessed her identity.

“I was coming for you, but it is fortunate you are so far on the way. There is a steamboat at the dock, and it will go out in half an hour. I could not get away sooner to tell you.” Mary French breathed heavily from running. “When the steamboat came in the captain sent for my husband, as the captains always do. I went with him: he knows how I dread to have him go alone upon a boat since an attempt was made last year to kidnap him. But this time there was another reason, for I have been watching. And sure enough, a young man was on the steamboat inquiring where he could find you. His name is James Arnold. The captain asked my husband to direct him to you. You will readily understand why he did not find you. Come at once!”

“I will not,” said Emeline.

“But you wanted me to help you, and I have been trying to do it. We easily learned by letter from our friends in Detroit who your lover was. My husband had me do that: he wanted to know. Then without his knowledge I stooped to write an anonymous letter.”

“To James Arnold?”

“Yes.”

“About me?”

“About you.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I said you were exposed to great danger on Beaver Island, among the Mormons, and if you had any interested friend it was time for him to interfere.”

“And that brought him here?”

“I am sure it did. He was keenly disappointed at not finding you.”

“But why didn't he come to the farm?”

“My husband prevented that. He said you were on Beaver Island three or four weeks ago, but you were now in the Fairy Isle. It was no lie. He spoke in parables, but the other heard him literally. We let him inquire of people in St. James. But no one had seen you since the Saturday you came to the Tabernacle. So he is going back to Mackinac to seek you. Your life will be decided in a quarter of an hour. Will you go on that steamboat?”

“Throw myself on the mercy of a man who dared—dared to break his engagement, and who ought to be punished and put on probation, and then refused! No, I cannot!”

“The minutes are slipping away.”

“Besides, I have nothing with me but the clothes I have on. And my uncle's family—think of my uncle's family!”

“You can write to your uncle and have him send your baggage. I dare not carry any messages. But I thought of what you would need to-night, and put some things and some money in this satchel. They were mine. Keep them all.”

Emeline took hold of the bag which Mary French shoved in her hand. Their faces were indistinct to each other.

“For the first time in my life I have deceived my husband!”

“Oh, what shall I do—what shall I do?” cried the girl.

A steamer whistle at St. James dock sent its bellow rebounding from tree to tree in the woods. Emeline seized Mary French and kissed her violently on both cheeks. She snatched the bag and flew towards St. James.

“Stop!” commanded the Prophet's wife.

She ran in pursuit, catching Emeline by the shoulders.

“You sha'n't go! What am I doing? Maybe robbing him of what is necessary to his highest success! I am a fool—to think he might turn back to me for consolation when you are gone—God forgive me such silly fondness! I can't have a secret between him and myself—I will tell him! You shall not go—and cause him a mortal hurt! Wait!—stop!—the boat is gone! It's too late!”

“Let me loose!” struggled Emeline, wrenching herself away.

She ran on through the woods, and Mary French, snatching at garments which eluded her, stumbled and fell on the damp path, gathering dead leaves under her palms. The steamer's prolonged bellow covered her voice.

Candles were lighted in St. James. The Tabernacle spread itself like a great circular web dark with moisture. Emeline was conscious of running across the gang-plank as a sailor stooped to draw it in. The bell was ringing and the boat was already in motion. It sidled and backed away from its moorings.

Emeline knelt panting at the rail on the forward deck. A flambeau fastened to the wharf bowed its light to the wind as the boat swung about, showing the King of Beaver smiling and waving his hand in farewell. He did not see Emeline. His farewell was for the man whom he had sent away without her. His golden hair and beard and blue eyes floated into Emeline's past as the steamer receded, the powerful face and lithe figure first losing their identity, and then merging into night. What if it was true that she was robbing both him and herself of the best life, as Mary French was smitten to believe at the last moment? Her Gentile gorge rose against him, and the traditions of a thousand years warred in her with nature; yet she stretched her hands towards him in the darkness.

Then she heard a familiar voice, and knew that the old order of things was returning, while Beaver Island, like a dream, went silently down upon the waters.

Some years later, in the '50's, Emeline, sitting opposite her husband at the breakfast-table, heard him announce from the morning paper:

“Murder of King Strang, the Mormon Prophet of Beaver Island.” All the details of the affair, even the track of the bullets which crashed into that golden head, were mercilessly printed. The reader, surprised by a sob, dropped his paper.

“What! Are you crying, Mrs. Arnold?”

“It was so cruel!” sobbed Emeline. “And Billy Wentworth, like a savage, helped to do it!”

“He had provocation, no doubt, though it is a horrid deed. Perhaps I owe the King of Beaver the tribute of a tear. He befogged me considerably the only time I ever met him.”

“You see only his evil. But I see what he was to Mary French and the others.” “His bereaved widows?” “The ones who believed in his best.”