She made a little protesting move with her hands, and would have spoken, but he was not done.

“Now, listen further.  You heard my father tell how I have seen this people driven and persecuted since I was a boy.  That, if nothing else, would take me away from these accursed States and their mobs.  Hatred of them has been bred into my marrow.  I know them for the most part to be unregenerate and doomed, but even if it were otherwise—­if they had the true light—­none the less would I be glad to go, because of what they have done to us and to me and to mine.  Oh, in the night I hear such cries of butchered mothers with their babes, and see the flames of the little cabins—­hear the shots and the ribaldry and the cursings.  My father spoke to you of Haun’s mill,—­that massacre back in Missouri.  That was eight years ago.  I was a boy of sixteen and my sister was a year older.  She had been left in my care while father and mother went on to Far West.  You have seen the portrait of her that mother has.  You know how delicately flower-like her beauty was, how like a lily, with a purity and an innocence to disarm any villainy.  Thirty families had halted at the mill the day before, the mob checking their advance at that point.  All was quiet until about four in the afternoon.  We were camped on either side of Shoal Creek.  Children were playing freely about while their mothers and fathers worked at the little affairs of a pilgrimage like that.  Most of them had then been three months on the road, enduring incredible hardships for the sake of their religion—­for him you believe to be a bad, common man.  But they felt secure now because one of the militia captains, officious like your captain here, had given them assurance the day before that they would be protected from all harm.  I was helping Brother Joseph Young to repair his wagon when I glanced up to the opposite side of Shoal Creek and saw a 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—­”