further. One of them saw her and shot. She fell half-fainting with a
bullet through her arm, and then half a dozen of them gathered quickly
about her. I ran to them, screaming and striking out with my fists, but
the devil was in them, and she, poor blossom, lay there helpless,
calling 'Boy, boy, boy!' as she had always called me since we were
babies together. Must I tell you the rest?--must I tell you--how those
devils--"

"Don't, don't! Oh, _no_!"

"I thought I must die! They held me there--"

He had gripped one of her wrists until she cried out in pain and he
released it.

"But the sight must have given me a man's strength, for my struggles
became so troublesome that one of them--I have always been grateful for
it--clubbed his musket and dealt me a blow that left me senseless. It
was dark when I came to, but I lay there until morning, unable to do
more than crawl. When the light came I found the poor little sister
there near where they had dragged us both, and she was _alive_. Can you
realise how awful that was--that she had lived through it? God be
thanked, she died before the day was out.

"After that the other mutilated bodies, the plundered wagons, all seemed
less horrible to me. My heart had been seared over. They had killed
twenty of the Saints, and the most of them we hurried to throw into a
well, fearful that the soldiers of Governor Boggs would come back at any
moment to strip and hack them. O God! and now you have gone over to one
of them!"