The Heroic Age

THE BRIDE 879

there was a crash. When Miriam caine to, she lay on a white hospital cot with her limb in a plaster cast. The autumn rain had fallen for three weeks on the graves of her husband and son. When she learned that, she turned her face to the wall and prayed that she might die. During the long months of convalescence, the old doctor shook his head and asked, "What can you do with a woman who does not want to live?" But live she did, though her bosom ached for the golden head that had nestled there. Since then her father and brothers had tried in vain to interest her in something. After the speaker closed, the choir sang a hymn which opened up vistas to her mind. It was: If you could hie to Kolob, In the twinkling of an eye, And then continue onward, With that same speed to fly,

Dye think that you could ever, Through all eternity, Find out the generation Where Gods began to be?

Or see the grand beginning Where space did not extend? Or view the last creation Where Gods and matter end? The works of Gods continue, And worlds and lives abound; Improvement and progression Have one eternal round. There is no end to matter, There is no end to space, There is no end to spirit, There is no end to race.

The result of Mrs. Manners' excursion to the meeting was that when Elder Brink and his companion called to deliver tracts at the Trent mansion, they were invited in. Elder Brink, square-jawed and red-haired was appalled at the magnificence of the vista, much as the barbarian Goth must have looked at the splendor of Rome. Elder Brink and his widowed mother in Idaho had garnered their gold from the grain and their silver from the sugar beets. Ahead of him swept the marble staircase. Beyond, he caught a glimpse of the green of the conservatory, the gold of the music room, the Cyprus wood of the library, with the dull glint of its thousands of richly bound books. The butler ushered the two men into the drawing room. Brink, man of the soil that he was, again felt the dull surge of resentment against the weight of wealth, until Mrs. Manners, in an orchid