h helped Cecilia
gather food and clothes and two Mackinac blankets from the stores of a
young couple not rich but open-handed. The lighthouse-keeper trimmed the
lantern to hang at the mast-head. He was about to call the two up-stairs
when the crunching of many feet on gravel was heard around his tower and
a torch was thrust at one of the windows.

At the same instant he put Elizabeth and Cecilia in the stairway and let
James Baker, bounding down three steps at once, into the room.

Each man took a gun, Ludlow blowing out the candle as he reached for his
weapons.

"Now you stand back out of sight and let me talk to them," he said to
the young Mormon, as an explosive clamor began. "They'll kill you,
and they daren't touch me. Even if they had anything against me, the
drunkest of them know better than to shoot down a government officer.
I'm going to open this window."

A rabble of dusky shapes headed by a torch-bearer who had doubtless
lighted his fat-stick at the burning temple, pressed forward to force a
way through the window.

"Get off of the flower-bed," said Ludlow, dropping the muzzle of his gun
on the sill. "You're tramping down my wife's flowers."

"It's your nosegays of Mormons we're after having, Ludlow. We seen them
shlipping in here!"

"It's shame to you, Ludlow, and your own da-cent wife that hard to come
at, by raison of King Strang!"

"Augh! thim bloomers!--they do be makin' me sthummick sick!"

"What hurts you worst," said Ludlow, "is the price you had to pay the
Mormons for fish barrels."

The mob groaned and hooted. "Wull ye give us out the divil forninst
there, or wull ye take a broadside through the windy?"

"I haven't any devil in the house."

"It's Jim Baker, be the powers. He wor seen, and his women."

"Jim Baker is here. But he's leaving the island at once with the women."

"He'll not lave it alive."

"You, Pat Corrigan," said Ludlow, pointing his finger at the
torch-bearer, "do you remember the morning you and your mate rowed in to
the lighthouse half-frozen and starved and I fed and warmed you?"

"Do I moind it? I do!"

"Did I let the Mormons take you then?"

"No, bedad."

"When King Strang's constables came galloping down here to arrest you,
didn't I run in water to my waist to push you off in your boat?"

"You did, bedad!"

"I didn't give you up to them, and I won't give this family up to you.
They're not doing you any harm. Let them peaceably leave Beaver."

"But t