Without citing chapter and verse the bishop began:

"And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way
off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his
neck and kissed him."

The bishop told the story of that surpassing parable, and then proceeded
to draw from it a discourse fitted to the drifting destinies in whose
presence he found himself for one solitary morning. He spoke unlike many
clergymen. His words were chiefly those which the people round him used,
and his voice was more like earnest talking than preaching.

Miss Sabina Stone felt the arm of her cow-puncher loosen slightly, and
she looked at him. But he was looking at the bishop, no longer gravely
but with wide-open eyes, alert. When the narrative reached the elder
brother in the field, and how he came to the house and heard sounds of
music and dancing, Miss Stone drew away from her companion and let him
watch the bishop, since he seemed to prefer that. She took to reading
hymns vindictively. The bishop himself noted the sun-browned boy face and
the wide-open eyes. He was too far away to see anything but the alert,
listening position of the young cow-puncher. He could not discern how
that, after he had left the music and dancing and begun to draw morals,
attention faded from those eyes that seemed to watch him, and they filled
with dreaminess. It was very hot in church. Chief Washakie went to sleep,
and so did a corporal; but Lin McLean sat in the same alert position till
Miss Stone pulled him and asked if he intended to sit down through the
hymn. Then church was out. Officers, Indians, and all the people
dispersed through the great sunshine to their dwellings, and the
cow-puncher rode beside Sabina in silence.