r to the whole community, and frequently
threatened to take the lives of his remaining comrades. In short, the
man seemed to have gone mad, and Young and Adams resolved, in
self-defence, to put him to death.

We spare the reader the sickening details. They accomplished the
terrible deed with an axe, and thus the number of the male refugees on
Pitcairn was reduced to two. The darkest hour of the lonely island had
been reached--the hour before the dawn.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

THE DAWN OF A BETTER DAY.

The eighteenth century passed away, and as the nineteenth began its
course, a great and marvellous change came over the dwellers on the
lonely island in that almost unknown region of the Southern Seas. It
was a change both spiritual and physical, the latter resulting from the
former, and both having their roots, as all things good must have, in
the blessed laws of God.

The change did not come instantaneously. It rose upon Pitcairn with the
sure but gradual influence of the morning dawn, and its progress, like
its advent, was unique in the history of the Church of God.

No preacher went forth to the ignorant people, armed with the powers of
a more or less correct theology. No prejudices had to be overcome, or
pre-existing forms of idolatry uprooted, and the people who had to be
changed were what might have been deemed most unlikely soil--mutineers,
murderers, and their descendants. The one hopeful characteristic among
them was the natural amiability of the women, for Young and Adams did
not display more than the average good-humour of men, yet these amiable
women, as we have seen, twice plotted and attempted the destruction of
the men, and two of them murdered in cold blood two of their own
kinsmen.

It may, perhaps, have already been seen that Young and Adams were of a
grave and earnest turn of mind. The terrible scenes which they had
passed through naturally deepened this characteristic, especially when
they thought of the dreadful necessity which had been forced on them--
the deliberate slaying of Matthew Quintal, an act which caused them to
_feel_ like murderers, however justifiable it may have seemed to them.

Like most men who are under deep and serious impressions, they kept
their thoughts to themselves. Indeed, John Adams, with his grave
matter-of-fact tendencies and undemonstrative disposition, would
probably never have opened his lips on spiritual things to his companion
if Young had not broken t