inging masons
building roofs of gold!' Puts 'em right before yu', and is poetry
without bein' foolish. His Holiness and his Grace. Well, they could not
hire me for either o' those positions. How many religions are there?"

"All over the earth?"

"Yu' can begin with ourselves. Right hyeh at home I know there's
Romanists, and Episcopals--"

"Two kinds!" I put in. "At least two of Episcopals."

"That's three. Then Methodists and Baptists, and--"

"Three Methodists!"

"Well, you do the countin'."

I accordingly did it, feeling my revolving memory slip cogs all the way
round. "Anyhow, there are safely fifteen."

"Fifteen." He held this fact a moment. "And they don't worship a whole
heap o' different gods like the ancients did?"

"Oh, no!"

"It's just the same one?"

"The same one."

The Virginian folded his hands over the horn of his saddle, and leaned
forward upon them in contemplation of the wide, beautiful landscape.

"One God and fifteen religions," was his reflection. "That's a right
smart of religions for just one God."

This way of reducing it was, if obvious to him, so novel to me that my
laugh evidently struck him as a louder and livelier comment than was
required. He turned on me as if I had somehow perverted the spirit of
his words.

"I ain't religious. I know that. But I ain't unreligious. And I know
that too."

"So do I know it, my friend."

"Do you think there ought to be fifteen varieties of good people?" His
voice, while it now had an edge that could cut anything it came against,
was still not raised. "There ain't fifteen. There ain't two. There's one
kind. And when I meet it, I respect it. It is not praying nor preaching
that has ever caught me and made me ashamed of myself, but one or two
people I have knowed that never said a superior word to me. They thought
more o' me than I deserved, and that made me behave better than I
naturally wanted to. Made me quit a girl onced in time for her not to
lose her good name. And so that's one thing I have never done. And if
ever I was to have a son or somebody I set store by, I would wish their
lot to be to know one or two good folks mighty well--men or women--women
preferred."

He had looked away again to the hills behind Sunk Creek ranch, to which
our walking horses had now almost brought us.

"As for parsons "--the gesture of his arm was a disclaiming one--"I
reckon some parsons have a right to tell yu' to be good. The bishop
of this hyeh