n a lower tone, "if I ain't mistaken, there's going to be some
work for the Sons of Dan!"

CHAPTER XV.

_How the Souls of Apostates Were Saved_

The Wild Ram of the Mountains had spoken truly; there was work at hand
for the Sons of Dan. When his Witness at last came to Joel Rae, he tried
vainly to recall the working of his mind at this time; to remember where
he had made the great turn--where he had faced about. For, once, he
knew, he had been headed the way he wished to go, a long, plain road,
reaching straight toward the point whither all the aspirations of his
soul urged him.

And then, all in a day or in a night, though he had seen never a turn in
the road, though he had gone a true and straight course, suddenly he had
looked up to find he was headed the opposite way. After facing his goal
so long, he was now going from it--and never a turn! It was the wretched
paradox of a dream.

The day after Brigham's sermon on blood-atonement, there had been a
meeting in the Historian's office, presided over by Brigham. And here
for the first time Joel Rae found he was no longer looked upon as one
too radical. Somewhat dazedly, too, he realised at this close range the
severely practical aspects of much that he had taught in theory. It was
strange, almost unnerving, to behold his own teachings naked of their
pulpit rhetoric; to find his long-cherished ideals materialised by
literal-minded, practiced men.

He heard again the oath he had sworn, back on the river-flat: "_I will
assist in executing all the decrees of the First President, Patriarch,
or President of the Twelve, and I will cause all who speak evil of the
Presidency or Heads of the Church to die the death of dissenters or
apostates_--" And then he had heard the business of the meeting
discussed. Decisions were reached swiftly, and orders given in words
that were few and plain. Even had these orders been repugnant to him,
they were not to be questioned; they came from an infallible priesthood,
obedience to which was the first essential to his soul's salvation; and
they came again from the head of an organisation to which he was bound
by every oath he had been taught to hold sacred. But, while they left
him dazed, disconcerted, and puzzled, he was by no means certain that
they were repugnant. They were but the legitimate extension of his
teachings since childhood, and of his own preaching.

In custody at Kayesville, twenty-five miles north of Salt Lake Cit