“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 and sympathise—­and care for—­but I cannot go—­even after all you say.  And don’t you see it will always be so!  My father says the priesthood will always be in trouble if it sets itself above the United States.  Dear Joel, I can’t go, indeed I can’t go!”

He spoke more softly now.

“Thank God I don’t realise it yet—­I mean, that we must part.  You tell me so and I hear you and my mind knows, but my heart hasn’t sensed it yet—­I can feel it now going stupidly along singing its old happy song of hope and gladness, while all this is going on here outside.  But soon the big hurt will come.  Oh, Prue—­Prue, girl!—­can’t you think what it will mean to me?  Don’t you know how I shall sicken for the sight of you, and my ears will listen for you!  Prudence, Prue, darling—­yet I must not be womanish!  I have a big work to do.  I have known it with a new clearness since that radiance rested above my head last night.  The truth burns in me like a fire.  Your going can’t take that from me.  It must be I was not meant to have you.  With you perhaps I could not have had a heart single to God’s work.  He permitted me to love you so I could be tried and proved.”

He looked at her fondly, and she could see striving and trembling in his eyes a great desire to crush her in his arms, yet he fought it down, and continued more calmly.

“But indeed I must be favoured more than common, to deserve that so great a hurt be put upon me, and I shall not be found wanting.  I shall never wed any woman but you, though, dear.  If not you, never any other.”

He stood up.

“I must go in to them now.  There must be work to do against the start to-morrow.”

“Joel!”

“May the Lord deafen my ears to you, darling!” and squaring his shoulders resolutely away from her, he left her on the seat and went in.