derstand 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
brin