"Oh! Don't whip him! It would be dastardly!" implored Jane, with
slow certainty of her failing courage.

Tull always blunted her spirit, and she grew conscious that she
had feigned a boldness which she did not possess. He loomed up
now in different guise, not as a jealous suitor, but embodying
the mysterious despotism she had known from childhood--the power
of her creed.

"Venters, will you take your whipping here or would you rather go
out in the sage?" asked Tull. He smiled a flinty smile that was
more than inhuman, yet seemed to give out of its dark aloofness a
gleam of righteousness.

"I'll take it here--if I must," said Venters. "But by God!--Tull
you'd better kill me outright. That'll be a dear whipping for you
and your praying Mormons. You'll make me another Lassiter!"

The strange glow, the austere light which radiated from Tull's
face, might have been a holy joy at the spiritual conception of
exalted duty. But there was something more in him, barely hidden,
a something personal and sinister, a deep of himself, an
engulfing abyss. As his religious mood was fanatical and
inexorable, so would his physical hate be merciless.

"Elder, I--I repent my words," Jane faltered. The religion in
her, the long habit of obedience, of humility, as well as agony
of fear, spoke in her voice. "Spare the boy!" she
whispered.