The King of Beaver, and Beaver Lights | Page 2

of Gentile children could also be heard at Saturday play.
Otherwise a Sabbath peacefulness was over the landscape. Beaver
Island had not a rugged coastline, though the harbor of St. James was
deep and good. Land rose from it in gentle undulations rather than hills.

Emeline and Roxy walked inland, with their backs to the harbor. In
summer, farmers who lived nearest St. James took short-cuts through
the woods to meeting, and let their horses rest.
The last house on the street was a wooden building of some pretension,
having bow-windows and a veranda. High pickets enclosed a secluded
garden. It was very unlike the log-cabins of the island.
"He lives here," said Roxy.
Emeline did not inquire who lived here. She understood, and her
question was--
"How many with him?"
"All of them--eight. Seven of them stay at home, but Mary French
travels with him. Didn't you notice her in the Tabernacle--the girl with
the rose in her hair, sitting near the platform?"
"Yes, I noticed her. Was that one of his wives?"
Roxy waited until they had struck into the woods path, and then looked
guardedly behind her.
"Mary French is the youngest one. She was sealed to the Prophet only
two years ago; and last winter she went travelling with him, and we
heard she dressed in men's clothes and acted as his secretary."
"But why did she do that when she was his wife according to your
religion?"
"I don't know," responded Roxy, mysteriously. "The Gentiles on the
mainland are very hard on us."
They followed the track between fragrant grapevine and hickory, and
the girl bred to respect polygamy inquired--
"Do you feel afraid of the Prophet, Cousin Emeline?"

"No, I don't," retorted the girl bred to abhor it.
"Sometimes I do. He makes people do just what he wants them to.
Mary French was a Gentile's daughter, the proudest girl that ever
stepped in St. James. She didn't live on the island; she came here to
visit. And he got her. What's the matter, Cousin Emeline?"
"Some one trod on my grave; I shivered. Cousin Roxy, I want to ask
you a plain question. Do you like a man's having more than one wife?"
"No, I don't. And father doesn't either. But he was obliged to marry
again, or get into trouble with the other elders. And Aunt Mahala is
very good about the house, and minds mother. The revelation may be
plain enough, but I am not the kind of a girl," declared Roxy, daringly,
as one might blaspheme, "that cares a straw for the revelation."
Emeline took hold of her arm, and they walked on with a new sense of
companionship.
"A great many of the people feel the same way about it. But when the
Prophet makes them understand 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