Opposite the post-office the bishop of Wyoming met him and greeted him. His lonely heart throbbed at the warm, firm grasp of this friend’s hand. The bishop saw his eyes glow suddenly, as if tears were close. But none came, and no word more open than, “I’m glad to see you.” But gossip had reached the bishop, and he was sorely troubled also. “What is all this?” said he, coming straight to it. The Virginian looked at the clergyman frankly. “Yu’ know just as much about it as I do,” he said. “And I’ll tell yu’ anything yu’ ask.” “Have you told Miss Wood?” inquired the bishop. The eyes of the bridegroom fell, and the bishop’s face grew at once more keen and more troubled. Then the bridegroom raised his eyes again, and the bishop almost loved him. He touched his arm, like a brother. “This is hard luck,” he said. The bridegroom could scarce keep his voice steady. “I want to do right to-day more than any day I have ever lived,” said he. “Then go and tell her at once.” “It will just do nothing but scare her.” “Go and tell her at once.” “I expected you was going to tell me to run away from Trampas. I can’t do that, yu’ know.” The bishop did know. Never before in all his wilderness work had he faced such a thing. He knew that Trampas was an evil in the country, and that the Virginian was a good. He knew that the cattle thieves--the rustlers--were gaining, in numbers and audacity; that they led many weak young fellows to ruin; that they elected their men to office, and controlled juries; that they were a staring menace to Wyoming. His heart was with the Virginian. But there was his Gospel, that he preached, and believed, and tried to live. He stood looking at the ground and drawing a finger along his eyebrow. He wished that he might have heard nothing about all this. But he was not one to blink his responsibility as a Christian server of the church militant. “Am I right,” he now slowly asked, “in believing that you think I am a sincere man?” “I don’t believe anything about it. I know it.” “I should run away from Trampas,” said the bishop. “That ain’t quite fair, seh. We all understand you have got to do the things you tell other folks to do. And you do them, seh. You never talk like anything but a man, and you never set yourself above others. You can saddle your own horses. And I saw yu’ walk unarmed into that White River excitement when those two other parsons was a-foggin’ and a-fannin’ for their own safety. Damn scoundrels!” The bishop instantly rebuked such language about brothers of his cloth, even though he disapproved both of them and their doctrines. “Every one may be an instrument of Providence,” he concluded. “Well,” said the Virginian, “if that is so, then Providence makes use of instruments I’d not touch with a ten-foot pole. Now if you was me, seh, and not a bishop, would you run away from Trampas?”