Now his heart beat high again, with something of the old swift fervour.  The Gentile yoke was at last to be thrown off.  War would come, and the Lord would surely hold them safe while they melted away the Gentile hosts.

He reached the settlement of Parowan that night, and when they told him there that the wagon-train coming south—­their ancient enemies who had plundered and butchered them in Jackson County—­was to be cut off before it left the basin, it seemed but right to him, the just vengeance of Heaven upon their one-time despoilers, and a fitting first act in the war-drama that was now to be played.

Once more the mob was marching upon them to despoil and murder and put them into the wilderness.  But now God had nerved and strengthened them to defend the walls of Zion, even against a mighty nation.  And as a token of His favour and His wish, here was a company of their bitterest foes delivered into their hands.  Beside the picture was another; he saw his sister, the slight, fair girl, in the grasp of the fiends at Haun’s Mill; the face of his father tossing on the muddy current and sucked under to the river-bottom; and the rough bark cylinder, festooned with black cloth, holding the worn form of the mother whose breast had nursed him.

When he started he had felt that he could never again preach while that secret lay upon him,—­that he could no longer rebuke sinners honestly,—­but this matter of war was different.

He preached a moving sermon that day from a text of Samuel:  “As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women.”  And when he was done the congregation had made the little dimly lighted meeting-house at Parowan ring with a favourite hymn:—­

  “Up, awake, ye defenders of Zion! 
   The foe’s at the door of your homes;
   Let each heart be the heart of a lion,
   Unyielding and proud as he roams. 
   Remember the wrongs of Missouri,
   Remember the fate of Nauvoo! 
   When the God-hating foe is before ye,
   Stand firm and be faithful and true.”

CHAPTER XVI.

The Order from Headquarters

He left Parowan the next morning to preach at one of the little settlements to the east.  He was gone three days.  When he came back they told him that the train of Missourians had passed through Parowan and on to the south.  He attended a military council held that evening in the meeting-house.  Three days of reflection, while it had not cooled the anger he felt toward these members of the mob that had so brutally wronged his people, had slightly cooled his ardour for aggressive warfare.