their hands,--sick men and women carried on beds, mothers luggin' babies
and leadin' children. My sakes! but I did want to run some bullets and
fill my old horn with powder for the consolation of Israel! They're
lyin' out over there in the slough now, as many as ain't gone to glory.
It made me jest plumb murderous!"

The younger man uttered a sharp cry of anguish. "What, oh, what has been
our sin, that we must be proved again? Why have we got to be chastened?"

"Then Brockman's force marched in Thursday afternoon, and hell was let
loose. His devils have plundered the town, thrown out the bedridden that
jest couldn't move, thrown their goods out after 'em, burned, murdered,
tore up. You come up from the river, and you ain't seen that yet--they
ain't touched the lower part of town--and now they're bunkin' in the
temple, defacin' it, defilin' it,--that place we built to be a house of
rest for the Lord when he cometh again. They drove me acrost the river
yesterday, and promised to shoot me if I dast show myself again. I
sneaked over in a skiff last night and got here to get my two pistols
and some money and trinkets we'd hid out. I was goin' to cross again
to-night and wait for you and the wagons."

"My God! and this is the nineteenth century in a land of liberty!"

"State of Illinois, U.S.A., September 19, 1846--but what of that? We're
the Lord's chosen, and over yender is a generation of vipers warned to
flee from the wrath to come. But they won't flee, and so we're outcasts
for the present, driven forth like snakes. The best American blood is in
our veins. We're Plymouth Rock stock, the best New England graft; the
fathers of nine tenths of us was at Bunker Hill or Valley Forge or
Yorktown, but what of that, I ask you?"