From this fire of his own building it seemed to him that he could obtain surcease only by reducing the self within him. As surely as he let it feel a want, all the torture came back upon him. When his pride lifted up its head, when he desired any satisfaction for himself, when he was tempted for a moment to lay down his cross, the cries came back, the sea of blood surged before him, and close behind came the shapes that crawled or moved furtively, ever about to spring in front and turn upon him. Small wonder, then, that his shoulders bent beneath unseen burdens, that his air was of one who suffered for all the world, and that they called him “the little man of sorrows.” With this knowledge he learned to permit himself only one great love, a love for the child Prudence. He was sure that no punishment could come through that. It was his day-star and his life, the one pleasure that brought no suffering with it. She was a child of fourteen now, a half-wild, firm-fleshed, glowing creature of the out-of-doors, who had lost with her baby softness all her resemblance to her mother. Her hair and eyes had darkened as she grew, and she was to be a larger woman, graver, deeper, more reserved; perhaps better calculated for the Kingdom by reason of a more reflective mind. He adored her, and was awed by her even when he taught her the truths of revealed religion. He closed his eyes at night upon a never-ending prayer for her soul; and opened them each day to a love of her that grew insidiously to enthrall him while he was all unconscious of its power—even while he knew with an awful certainty that he must have no treasure of his own which he could not willingly relinquish at the first call. She, in turn, loved and confided in her father, the shy, bent, shrunken little man with the smile. “He always smiles as if he’d hurt himself and didn’t want to show it before company,” were the words in which she announced one of her early discoveries about him. But she liked and ruled him, and came to him for comfort when she was hurt or when Lorena scolded. For the third wife did not hesitate to characterise the child as “ready-made sin,” and to declare that it took all her spare time, “and a lot that ain’t spare,” to neat up the house after her. “And her paw—though Lord knows who her maw was—a-dressing her to beat the cars; while he ain’t never made over me since the blessed day I married him—not that _much_! But, thank heavens, it can’t last very long, with the Son of Man already started, like you might say.” Chapter XXIX. The Wild Ram of the Mountains Offers to Become a Saviour on Mount Zion