lf a hundred of them, sturdy, healthy, rosy boys and girls,
dad in home-made garments. The young woman teacher was as embarrassed
as her pupils were shy, and the visitors withdrew without having heard a
word of lessons.

Withers then called upon Smith, Henninger, and Beal, and their wives.
Shefford found himself cordially received, and what little he did say
showed him how he would be listened to when he cared to talk. These folk
were plain and kindly, and he found that there was nothing about them to
dislike. The men appeared mild and quiet, and when not conversing seemed
austere. The repose of the women was only on the surface; underneath he
felt their intensity. Especially in many of the younger women, whom
he met in the succeeding hour, did he feel this power of restrained
emotion. This surprised him, as did also the fact that almost every
one of them was attractive and some of them were exceedingly pretty.
He became so interested in them all as a whole that he could not
individualize one. They were as widely different in appearance and
temperament as women of any other class, but it seemed to Shefford that
one common trait united them--and it was a strange, checked yearning for
something that he could not discover. Was it happiness? They certainly
seemed to be happy, far more so than those millions of women who were
chasing phantoms. Were they really sealed wives, as Withers believed,
and was this unnatural wife-hood responsible for the strange intensity?
At any rate he returned to camp with the conviction that he had stumbled
upon a remarkable situation.

He had been told the last names of only three women, and their husbands
were in the village. The names of the others were Ruth, Rebecca,
Joan--he could not recall them all. They were the mothers of these
beautiful children. The fathers, as far as he was concerned, were as
intangible as myths. Shefford was an educated clergyman, a man of the
world, and, as such, knew women in his way. Mormons might be strange and
different, yet the fundamental truth was that all over the world mothers
of children were wives; there was a relation between wife and mother
that did not need to be named to be felt; and he divined from this
that, whatever the situation of these lonely and hidden women, they knew
themselves to be wives. Shefford absolutely satisfied himself on that
score. If they were miserable they certainly did not show it, and the
question came to him how just was th