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Then a new sound smote the air. She sat upright and listened.

Around the bend she heard a high-pitched voice declaiming in measured tones.

“‘Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion endureth throughout all generations,'” the voice chanted.

“‘The Lord upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth all that he bowed down.'”

The speaker strode in sight. He was one of the old-fashioned itinerant preachers occasionally seen in the Hills, filled with fanatic enthusiasm, journeying from place to place on foot, exhorting by the fear of hell fire rather than by the hope of heaven’s bliss, half-crazy, half-inspired, wholly in earnest. His form was gaunt. He was clad in a shiny black coat buttoned closely, and his shoes showed dusty and huge beneath his carefully turned-up trousers. A beaver of ancient pattern was pushed far back from his narrow forehead, and from beneath it flashed vividly his fierce hawk-eyes. Over his shoulder, suspended from a cane, was a carpet-bag. He stepped eagerly forward with an immense excess of nervous force that carried him rapidly on. Nothing more out of place could be imagined than this comical figure against the simplicity of the hills. Yet for that very reason he was the more grateful to the woman’s perturbed soul. She listened eagerly for his next words.

He strode fiercely across the stones of the little ford, declaiming with energy, with triumph:

“‘The eyes of all wait upon Thee, and Thou givest them their meat in due season.

“‘Thou openest Thine hand, and satisfieth the desire of every living thing.

“‘The Lord is righteous in all His ways, and holy in all His works.

“‘The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon Him, to all that call upon Him in truth.

“‘He will fulfil the desire of all that fear Him: He also will hear their cry and save them.'”

Anne saw but two things plainly in all the world–the clear-eyed stranger like a god; this fiery old man who spoke words containing strange, though vague, intimations of comfort. From the agony of her soul but one thought leaped forth–to make the comfort real, to find out how to raise herself from her sin, to become worthy of the goodness which she had that morning for the first time clearly seen. She sprang forward and seized the preacher’s arm. Interrupted in his ecstasy, he rolled his eyes down on her but half comprehending.

“How? How?” she gasped. “Help me! What must I do?”

She held out her empty hands with a gesture of appeal. The old man’s mind still burned with the fever of his fanatical inspiration. He hardly saw her, and did not understand all the import of her words. He looked at her vacantly, and caught sight of her outstretched hands.

“‘And to work with your hands as we command you,'” he quoted vaguely, then shook himself free of her detaining grasp and marched grandly on, rolling out the mighty syllables of the psalms.

“To work with my hands; to work with my hands,” the woman repeated looking at her outspread palms. “Yes, that is it!” she said, slowly.

* * * * *

Anne Bingham washed dishes at the Prairie Dog Hotel for a week. The first day was one of visions; the second one of irksomeness; the third one of wearisome monotony. The first was as long as it takes to pass from one shore to the other of the great dream-sea; the second was an age; the third an eternity. The first was rose-hued; the second was dull; the third was filled with the grayness that blurs activity turned to mechanical action.

And on the eighth day occurred the monthly pay-day dance of the Last Chance mine. All the men were drunk, all the women were drunker, but drunkest of all was the undoubted favourite of the company, Bismarck Anne. Two men standing by the door saw nothing remarkable about that–it had happened the last week. But in that time Bismarck Anne had had her chance, she had eaten of the fruit of the Tree, and so now was in mortal sin.