large company of armed and mounted men coming toward our peaceful group at full speed. One of our number, seeing that they were many and that we were unarmed, ran out and cried, ‘Peace!’ but they came upon us and fired their volley. Men, women, and little children fell under it. Those surviving fled to the blacksmith’s shop for shelter—huddling inside like frightened sheep. But there were wide cracks between the logs, and up to these the mob went, putting their guns through to do their work at leisure. Then the plundering began—plundering and worse.” 

 He stopped, trembling, and she put out her hand to him in sympathy. When he had regained control of himself, he continued. 

 “At the first volley I had hurried sister to a place of concealment in the underbrush, and she, hearing them search for the survivors after the shooting was over, thought we were discovered, and sprang up to run further. One of them saw her and shot. She fell half-fainting with a bullet through her arm, and then half a dozen of them gathered quickly about her. I ran to them, screaming and striking out with my fists, but the devil was in them, and she, poor blossom, lay there helpless, calling ‘Boy, boy, boy!’ as she had always called me since we were babies together. Must I tell you the rest?—must I tell you—how those devils—” 

 “Don’t, don’t! Oh, no!” 

 “I thought I must die! They held me there—” 

 He had gripped one of her wrists until she cried out in pain and he released it. 

 “But the sight must have given me a man’s strength, for my struggles became so troublesome that one of them—I have always been grateful for it—clubbed his musket and dealt me a blow that left me senseless. It was dark when I came to, but I lay there until morning, unable to do more than crawl. When the light came I found the poor little sister there near where they had dragged us both, and she was alive. Can you realise how awful that was—that she had lived through it? God be thanked, she died before the day was out. 

 “After that the other mutilated bodies, the plundered wagons, all seemed less horrible to me. My heart had been seared over. They had killed twenty of the Saints, and the most of them we hurried to throw into a well, fearful that the soldiers of Governor Boggs would come back at any moment to strip and hack them. O God! and now you have gone over to one of them!” 

 “Joel,—dear, dear Joel!—indeed I pity 

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