In that low, passionate utterance Shefford read the death-blow to the old Mormon polygamous creed.  In the uplift of his spirit, in the joy at this revelation, he almost forgot the stern matter at hand.  Ruth and Joe Lake belonged to a younger generation of Mormons.  Their nobility in this instance was in part a revolt at the conditions of their lives.  Doubt was knocking at Joe Lake’s heart, and conviction had come to this young sealed wife, bitter and hopeless while she had been fettered, strong and mounting now that she was free.  In a flash of inspiration Shefford saw the old order changing.  The Mormon creed might survive, but that part of it which was an affront to nature, a horrible yoke on women’s necks, was doomed.  It could not live.  It could never have survived more than a generation or two of religious fanatics.  Shefford had marked a different force and religious fervor in the younger Mormons, and now he understood them.

“Ruth, you talk wildly,” he said.  “But I understand.  I see.  You are free and you’re going to stay free. . . .  It stuns me to think of that man of many wives.  What did you feel when you were told he was dead?”

“I dare not think of that.  It makes me—­wicked.  And he was good to me. . . .  Listen.  Last night about midnight he came to my window and woke me.  I got up and let him in.  He was in a terrible state.  I thought he was crazy.  He walked the floor and called on his saints and prayed.  When I wanted to light a lamp he wouldn’t let me.  He was afraid I’d see his face.  But I saw well enough in the moonlight.  And I knew something had happened.  So I soothed and coaxed him.  He had been a man as close-mouthed as a stone.  Yet then I got him to talk. . . .  He had gone to Mary’s, and upon entering, thought he heard some one with her.  She didn’t answer him at first.  When he found her in her bedroom she was like a ghost.  He accused her.  Her silence made him furious.  Then he berated her, brought down the wrath of God upon her, threatened her with damnation.  All of which she never seemed to hear.  But when he tried to touch her she flew at him like a she-panther.  That’s what he called her.  She said she’d kill him!  And she drove him out of her house. . . .  He was all weak and unstrung, and I believe scared, too, when he came to me.  She must have been a fury.  Those quiet, gentle women are furies when they’re once roused.  Well, I was hours up with him and finally he got over it.  He didn’t pray any more.  He paced the room.  It was just daybreak when he said the wrath of God had come to him.  I tried to keep him from going back to Mary.  But he went. . . .  An hour later the women ran to tell me he had been found dead at Mary’s door.”

“Ruth—­she was mad—­driven—­she didn’t know what she—­was doing,” said Shefford, brokenly.

“She was always a strange girl, more like an Indian than any one I ever knew.  We called her the Sago Lily.  I gave her the name.  She was so sweet, lovely, white and gold, like those flowers. . . .  And to think!  Oh, it’s horrible for her!  You must save her.  If you get her away there never will be anything come of it.  The Mormons will hush it up.”