drop that `gentlemen' palaver--it
sounds a bit off in a cavern, don't you know."

Winfield bowed to the cousins over this unceremonious and characteristic
introduction, and then again took up the thread of his story.

"I was going to say that I feel certain you are quite safe in trusting
yonder Zulu; he hated his brutal masters even more than I did, and I
suspect he only interfered to-day because he knew that if he did not do
so his own skin would pay the forfeit. He once escaped, and was at
large for upwards of three months, and I suppose he must then have
unearthed this hiding-place. He killed one of the guards who stood in
his way, and was to have been shot when retaken; but the Holy Three
relented at the last moment, on the score of his being such an excellent
hunter with native weapons--a great consideration with these people, as
the stock of ammunition which has sufficed them for fifty years is
getting rather low. They got a dozen barrels of powder out of my little
camp, and thought they had found a treasure, but, unfortunately for
them, it was fine blasting powder, which blew half a dozen of their
rotten old shooting-irons to pieces, and opportunely hurried two of
their biggest ruffians into the nether world."

A discussion then ensued, in which Grenville closely questioned their
new ally, and received answers which gave him a very fair idea of their
present position and prospects, and confirmed him in the knowledge that
their party would never be permitted to leave the Mormon territory alive
if those gentry had their own way. "Only one man," said Winfield, "ever
got away alive, and he, curiously enough, must have escaped two or three
days before you got in. He was a very decent man, and a great agitator
for reform, and was consequently popular with many of the people, but
particularly obnoxious to the Holy Three and their immediate satellites,
the Avenging Angels."

Grenville obtained an accurate description of this fortunate (?)
individual, and had little difficulty in convincing Winfield that the
man in question--or, rather, all that remained of him--now hung rotting
ignominiously upon a cross near the great stone stairway.

"That explains their coolness over it all," said Winfield. "I told the
guards that he would be back in two months' time with an army to reduce
them, but they only laughed, and said `they guessed their little country
was just about impregnable,' and they were glad to see the last