But Elvira was expressing with hysterical warmth the same sentiments.

“I guess I’ll feel it an honour to have my name joined with yours.  I haven’t got the length of taking off my shoes yet.”

Darling began to sing one of the inspiriting Mormon hymns.

    “When Joseph to Cumorah came.”

“Poor Joe!” Elvira spoke to the elder in a confidential whisper, “when he cheated over the bank I thought some fiend had put a ring in his nose, and was leading him out to dance, and that I should be able to sit and laugh.  Now he’s lying upon straw in the gaol.  What will they do to him if they lynch him?”

“Tear him limb from limb,” whispered Darling, also under his breath.  He was probably shrewd enough to know the force of Smith’s suffering in stimulating the piety of the faithful, but truth, and grief concerning the truth, were in his words also.  He sighed a big sincere sigh, and repeated sadly, “Tear him limb from limb, or burn him to death by a slow fire.”  Such atrocities, as practised upon criminal negroes, were not unknown in the locality, which gave the elder’s words a graphic power, but Elvira’s answer was wholly unexpected.

“How droll!” she returned.

The elder was annoyed.  He had not refined susceptibilities which sought immediate relief from the dreadful pictures he had suggested, nor did he at all comprehend that her rippling smile was hysterical.  “I don’t see anything droll about it, sister,” he said sulkily.

“Don’t you?  Now, it all seems to me very droll—­you splashing along there barefoot, why” (she drew back a little to get the better view, laughing excitedly), “you’ve no idea how ridiculous you look; and Mrs. Halsey stalking along like a dignified ghost, afraid that you and I will kiss one another if we take to whispering, and this woman dying here with her head resting on a sack of potatoes, and the impudent little person you’ve just christened intruding herself upon the world only to go out of it again, and all these fine people in Missouri rubbing their hands and thinking they have done such a noble deed.  I think,” she added, laughing more loudly, “that they are the drollest part of it all.”

“This nation will find that there’s a sequel to it that they won’t laugh at.”  These words of Darling came from some region underneath that of his ordinary conversation, as a man takes a dagger from under his cloak and lets it flash ere he hides it again.  “The government of these United States that has laughed at our sufferings will rue the day.”

“Even your saying that is very droll, but I love you for it.”  Elvira lifted both her hands as if testifying to her own sincerity.  “I love you for it.”

The elder thought it needful here to be again jocose.  “Oh, come now, I am married.”

Elvira did not feel herself insulted.  “These United States,” she cried, “they cackle over the word ‘freedom’ like so many hens that have each of them laid an egg and go strutting and boasting while the housewife empties their nests.  The housewife represents the natural course of events, and in this case her name is ‘Mrs. Mobocracy.’”