He was told about how long.

"Mr. Bishop," said Lin, "I ain't got good knowledge of the Bible, and I
never figured it to be a book much on to facts. And I tell you I'm more
plumb beat about it's having that elder brother, and him being angry,
down in black and white two thousand years ago, than--than if I'd seen a
man turn water into wine, for I'd have knowed that ain't so. But the
elder brother is facts--dead-sure facts. And they knowed about that, and
put it down just the same as life two thousand years ago!"

"Well," said the bishop, wisely ignoring the challenge as to miracles, "I
am a good twenty years older than you, and all that time I've been
finding more facts in the Bible every day I have lived."

Lin meditated. "I guess that could be," he said. "Yes; after that yu've
been a-readin', and what I know for myself that I didn't know till
lately, I guess that could be."

Then the bishop talked with exceeding care, nor did he ask uncomfortable
things, or moralize visibly. Thus he came to hear how it had fared with
Lin his friend, and Lin forgot altogether about its being a parson he was
delivering the fulness of his heart to. "And come to think," he
concluded, "it weren't home I had went to back East, layin' round them
big cities, where a man can't help but feel strange all the week. No,
sir! Yu' can blow in a thousand dollars like I did in New York, and it'll
not give yu' any more home feelin' than what cattle has put in a
stock-yard. Nor it wouldn't have in Boston neither. Now this country
here" (he waved his hand towards the endless sage-brush), "seein' it
onced more, I know where my home is, and I wouldn't live nowheres else.