“I agreed.  But Mother Jane absolutely forbade me to marry him.  Then the Mormons took me away.  It nearly killed me to leave Uncle Jim and Mother Jane.  I was carried and lifted out of the valley, and rode a long way on a horse.  They brought me here, to the cabin where I live, and I have never been away except that—­that time—­to—­Stonebridge.  Only little by little did I learn my position.  Bishop Kane was kind, but stern, because I could not be quick to learn the faith.

“I am not a sealed wife.  But they’re trying to make me one.  The master Mormon—­he visited me often—­at night—­till lately.  He threatened me.  He never told me a name—­except Saint George.  I don’t—­know him—­except his voice.  I never—­saw his face—­in the light!”

. . . . . . . . . . .

Fay Larkin ended her story.  Toward its close Shefford had grown involuntarily restless, and when her last tragic whisper ceased all his body seemed shaken with a terrible violence of his joy.  He strode to and fro in the dark shadow of the stone.  The receding blood left him cold, with a pricking, sickening sensation over his body, but there seemed to be an overwhelming tide accumulating deep in his breast—­a tide of passion and pain.  He dominated the passion, but the ache remained.  And he returned to the quiet figure on the stone.

“Fay Larkin!” he exclaimed, with a deep breath of relief that the secret was disclosed.  “So you’re not a wife! . . .  You’re free!  Thank Heaven!  But I felt it was sacrifice.  I knew there had been a crime.  For crime it is.  You child!  You can’t understand what crime.  Oh, almost I wish you and Jane and Lassiter had never been found.  But that’s wrong of me.  One year of agony—­that shall not ruin your life.  Fay, I will take you away.”

“Where?” she whispered.

“Away from this Mormon country—­to the East,” he replied, and he spoke of what he had known, of travel, of cities, of people, of happiness possible for a young girl who had spent all her life hidden between the narrow walls of a silent, lonely valley—­he spoke swiftly and eloquently till he lost his breath.

There was an instant of flashing wonder and joy on her white face, and then the radiance paled, the glow died.  Her soul was the darker for that one strange, leaping glimpse of a glory not for such as she.

“I must stay here,” she said, shudderingly.

“Fay!—­How strange to say Fay aloud to you!—­Fay, do you know the way to Surprise Valley?”

“I don’t know where it is, but I could go straight to it,” she replied.

“Take me there.  Show me your beautiful valley.  Let me see where you ran and climbed and spent so many lonely years.”

“Ah, how I’d love to!  But I dare not.  And why should you want me to take you?  We can run and climb here.”

“I want to—­I mean to save Jane Withersteen and Lassiter,” he declared.