mped on
the River Jordan. But, to the deep despair of one observer, these
invaders committed no depredation or overt act. After resting
inoffensively two days on the Jordan, they marched forty miles south to
Cedar Valley, where Camp Floyd was established.

Thus, no one fully comprehending how it had come about, peace was seen
suddenly to have been restored. The people, from Brigham down, had been
offered a free pardon for all past treasons and seditions if they would
return to their allegiance to the Federal government; the new officers
of the Territory were installed, sons of perdition in the seats of the
Lord's mighty; and sermons of wrath against Uncle Sam ceased for the
moment to resound in the tabernacle. Early in July, Brigham ordered the
people to return to their homes. They had offered these as a sacrifice,
even as Abraham had offered Isaac, and the Lord had caught them a timely
ram in the thicket.

In the midst of the general rejoicing, Joel Rae was overwhelmed with
humiliation and despair. He was ashamed for having once wished to be
another Lion of the Lord. It was a poor way to find favour with God, he
thought,--this refusing battle when it had been all but forced upon
them. It was plain, however, that the Lord meant to try them
further,--plain, too, that in His inscrutable wisdom He had postponed
the destruction of the wicked nation to the east of them.

He longed again to rise before the people and call them to repentance
and to action. Once he would have done so, but now an evil shadow lay
upon him. Intuitively he knew that his words would no longer come with
power. Some virtue had gone out of him. And with this loss of confidence
in himself came again a desire to be away from the crowded center.

Off to the south was the desert. There he could be alone; there face God
and his own conscience and have his inmost soul declare the truth about
himself. In his sadness he would have liked to lead the people with him,
lead them away from some evil, some falsity that had crept in about
them; he knew not what it was nor how it had come, but Zion had been
defiled. Something was gone from the Church, something from Brigham,
something from himself,--something, it almost seemed, even from the God
of Israel. When the summer waned, his plan was formed to go to one of
the southern settlements to live. Brigham had approved. The Church
needed new blood there.

He rode out of the city one early morning in September, fac