stop!--the boat is gone!
It's too late!"

"Let me loose!" struggled Emeline, wrenching herself away.

[Illustration: Let me loose! 148]

She ran on through the woods, and Mary French, snatching at garments
which eluded her, stumbled and fell on the damp path, gathering dead
leaves under her palms. The steamer's prolonged bellow covered her
voice.

Candles were lighted in St. James. The Tabernacle spread itself like a
great circular web dark with moisture. Emeline was conscious of running
across the gang-plank as a sailor stooped to draw it in. The bell was
ringing and the boat was already in motion. It sidled and backed away
from its moorings.

Emeline knelt panting at the rail on the forward deck. A flambeau
fastened to the wharf bowed its light to the wind as the boat swung
about, showing the King of Beaver smiling and waving his hand in
farewell. He did not see Emeline. His farewell was for the man whom
he had sent away without her. His golden hair and beard and blue eyes
floated into Emeline's past as the steamer receded, the powerful face
and lithe figure first losing their identity, and then merging into
night. What if it was true that she was robbing both him and herself of
the best life, as Mary French was smitten to believe at the last moment?
Her Gentile gorge rose against him, and the traditions of a thousand
years warred in her with nature; yet she stretched her hands towards him
in the darkness.

Then she heard a familiar voice, and knew that the old order of things
was returning, while Beaver Island, like a dream, went silently down
upon the waters.

Some years later, in the '50's, Emeline, sitting opposite her husband at
the breakfast-table, heard him announce from the morning paper:

"Murder of King Strang, the Mormon Prophet of Beaver Island." All the
details of the affair, even the track of the bullets which crashed into
that golden head, were mercilessly printed. The reader, surprised by a
sob, dropped his paper.

"What! Are you crying, Mrs. Arnold?"

"It was so cruel!" sobbed Emeline. "And Billy Wentworth, like a savage,
helped to do it!"

"He had provocation, no doubt, though it is a horrid deed. Perhaps I owe
the King of Beaver the tribute of a tear. He befogged me considerably
the only time I ever met him."

"You see only his evil. But I see what he was to Mary French and the
others." "His bereaved widows?" "The ones who believed in his best."

*****

BEAVER LIGHTS

A