“I heard everything,” he insisted, again raised upon his elbows. “‘It was built like unto a dish, and the length was about as long as a tree—’” “What was?” “The Urim and Thummim.” When he saw that she was really distressed, he tried to cheer her. “Now don’t be discouraged,” he said, as they started home in the late afternoon. “You can’t expect to get me roped and hog-tied the very first day. There’s lots of time, and you’ll have to keep at it. When I was a kid learning to throw a rope, I used to practise on the skull of a steer that was nailed to a post. At first it didn’t look like I could ever do it. I’d forget to let the rope loose from my left hand, or I wouldn’t make the loop line out flat around my head, or she’d switch off to one side, or something. But at last I’d get over the horns every time. Then I learned to do it running past the post; and after that I’d go down around the corral and practise on some quiet old heifer, and so on. The only thing is—never give up.” “But what good does it do if you won’t pay attention?” “Oh, well, I can’t learn a new religion all at once. It’s like riding a new saddle. You put one on and ‘drag the cinches up and lash them, and you think it’s going to be fine, and you don’t see why it isn’t. But you find out that you have to ride it a little at a time and break it in. Now, you take a fresh start with me to-morrow.” “Of course I’m going to try.” “And it isn’t as if I was regular out-and-out sinful. My adopted father, Ezra Calkins, _he’s_ a good man. But, now I think of it, I don’t know what church he ever did belong to. He’ll go to any of ’em,—don’t make any difference which,—Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Catholic; he says he can get all he’s looking for out of any of ’em, and he kind of likes to change off now and then. But he’s a good man. He won’t hire any one that cusses too bad or is hard on animals, and he won’t even let the freighters work on Sunday. He brought me up not to drink or gamble, or go round with low folks and all like that, and not to swear except when you’re driving cattle and have to. ‘Keep clean inside and out,’ he says, ‘and then you’re safe,’ he says. ‘Then tie up to some good church for company, if you want to, not thinking bad of the others, just because you didn’t happen to join them. Or it don’t hurt any to graze a little on all the ranges,’ he says. And he sent me to public school and brought me up pretty well, so you can see I’m not plumb wicked. Now after you get me coming, I may be easier than you think.” She resolved to pray for some special gift to meet his needs. If he were not really sinful, there was all the more reason why he should be saved into the Kingdom. The sun went below the western rim of the valley as they walked, and the cooling air was full of the fresh summer scents from field and garden and orchard.