n into the hall, could not
see distinctly at first. His eyes blurred. He heard a subdued murmur
of many voices. Withers appeared to be affected with the same kind of
blindness, for he stood bewildered a moment. But he recovered sooner
than Shefford. Gradually the darkness shrouding many obscure forms
lifted. Withers drew him through a crowd of men and women to one side
of the hall, and squeezed along a wall to a railing where progress was
stopped.

Then Shefford raised his head to look with bated breath and strange
curiosity.

The hall was large and had many windows. Men were in consultation upon a
platform. Women to the number of twenty sat close together upon benches.
Back of them stood another crowd. But the women on the benches held
Shefford's gaze. They were the prisoners. They made a somber group. Some
were hooded, some veiled, all clad in dark garments except one on the
front bench, and she was dressed in white. She wore a long hood that
concealed her face. Shefford recognized the hood and then the slender
shape. She was Mary--she whom her jealous neighbors had named the Sago
Lily. At sight of her a sharp pain pierced Shefford's breast. His eyes
were blurred when he forced them away from her, and it took a moment for
him to see clearly.

Withers was whispering to him or to some one near at hand, but Shefford
did not catch the meaning of what was said. He paid more attention;
however, Withers ceased speaking. Shefford gazed upon the crowd back
of him. The women were hooded and it was not possible to see what they
looked like. There were many stalwart, clean-cut, young Mormons of Joe
Lake's type, and these men appeared troubled, even distressed and at a
loss. There was little about them resembling the stern, quiet, somber
austerity of the more matured men, and nothing at all of the strange,
aloof, serene impassiveness of the gray-bearded old patriarchs. These
venerable men were the Mormons of the old school, the sons of the
pioneers, the ruthless fanatics. Instinctively Shefford felt that it was
in them that polygamy was embodied; they were the husbands of the sealed
wives. He conceived an absorbing curiosity to learn if his instinct was
correct; and hard upon that followed a hot, hateful eagerness to see
which one was the husband of Mary.

"There's Bishop Kane," whispered Withers, nudging Shefford. "And there's
Waggoner with him."

Shefford saw the bishop, and then beside him a man of striking presence.

"