terms wasn’t reely set till Thursday morning, but we knew they would be, and so all Wednesday night we was movin’ acrost the river, and it kept up all next day,—­day before yesterday.  You’d ought to ‘a’ been here then; you wouldn’t wonder at my comin’ down on you like a thousand of brick jest now, takin’ you for a mobocrat.  You’d ‘a’ seen families druv right out of their homes, with no horses, tents, money, nor a day’s provisions,—­jest a little foolish household stuff they could carry in their hands,—­sick men and women carried on beds, mothers luggin’ babies and leadin’ children.  My sakes! but I did want to run some bullets and fill my old horn with powder for the consolation of Israel!  They’re lyin’ out over there in the slough now, as many as ain’t gone to glory.  It made me jest plumb murderous!”

The younger man uttered a sharp cry of anguish.  “What, oh, what has been our sin, that we must be proved again?  Why have we got to be chastened?”

“Then Brockman’s force marched in Thursday afternoon, and hell was let loose.  His devils have plundered the town, thrown out the bedridden that jest couldn’t move, thrown their goods out after ’em, burned, murdered, tore up.  You come up from the river, and you ain’t seen that yet—­they ain’t touched the lower part of town—­and now they’re bunkin’ in the temple, defacin’ it, defilin’ it,—­that place we built to be a house of rest for the Lord when he cometh again.  They drove me acrost the river yesterday, and promised to shoot me if I dast show myself again.  I sneaked over in a skiff last night and got here to get my two pistols and some money and trinkets we’d hid out.  I was goin’ to cross again to-night and wait for you and the wagons.”

“My God! and this is the nineteenth century in a land of liberty!”

“State of Illinois, U.S.A., September 19, 1846—­but what of that?  We’re the Lord’s chosen, and over yender is a generation of vipers warned to flee from the wrath to come.  But they won’t flee, and so we’re outcasts for the present, driven forth like snakes.  The best American blood is in our veins.  We’re Plymouth Rock stock, the best New England graft; the fathers of nine tenths of us was at Bunker Hill or Valley Forge or Yorktown, but what of that, I ask you?”

The speaker became oratorical as his rage grew.

“What did Matty Van Buren say to Sidney Rigdon and Elias Higbee when they laid our cause before him at Washington after our Missouri persecutions—­when the wicked hatred of them Missourians had as a besom of fire swept before it into exile the whipped and plundered Saints of Jackson County?  Well, he said:  ’Gentlemen, your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you.’  That’s what a President of the United States said to descendants of Mayflower crossers who’d been foully dealt with, and been druv from their substance and their homes, their wheat burned in the stack and in the shock, and themselves butchered or put into the wilderness.  And now the Lord’s word to this people is to gether out again.”