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 tho