offerings of a virgin heart!
Over, and over, and over again, I read the cipher--to me more touching
than the wildest tale of romance. Alas! it was not all joy. There was
more than a moiety of sadness, constantly increasing its measure. In
another moment, the sadness overcame the joy. I tottered towards the
chair, and dropped into it--my spirit completely prostrated by the
conflicting emotions.

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.

A WORD ABOUT MORMON MONSTERS.

Not long did I remain under the mental paralysis. There was no time for
idle repining. The intelligence, derived from the torn leaf, had given
me a cue for action; and my spirit struggled to free itself from the
lethargy of grief. Hope whispered the watchword, "Up and be doing!" and
I arose to obey its mandate.

My heart was on fire--wildly, madly on fire. The contents of that
epistle, while it imbued my spirit with the sweetest of all earthly
pleasures, revealed to it the deadliest of dangers--imparting to it an
anguish beyond expression. It told me far more than the writer herself
knew--both of her love and what she had need to fear: for, in her
guileless innocence, was she alike unconscious of the passion and the
peril. Not so I. She had opened her heart before me. As on a printed
page, I could trace its tender inclinings. Had this been all, I should
have been happy--supremely happy. But, alas! that writing told me more:
that she who had pencilled it was in deadly peril. No--not _deadly_: it
was not of life; but of something fur dearer--to me a thousand times
more dear--her virgin honour. Now comprehended I, in all their
diabolical significance, those wild weird words: "The wolf has slept in
the lair of the forest deer--the yellow fawn will be his victim!" Now
knew I the wolf--a wolf disguised in the clothing of the lamb? It
needed no remarkable acumen to tell to whom the figure referred. The
writing itself revealed him--all but the name; and that was manifest by
implication. The man with whom "Marian went away"--he whom I had seen
in clerical garb and guise, was the wolf of the metaphor; and that man
was Stebbins, the _Mormon! With him, too, Lilian had gone away_!

Not with words can I express the suggestive hideousness of this thought.
To understand it in all its cruel significance, the reader should be
acquainted with that peculiar sect--known as the "Church of Latter-Day
Saints"--should have read its history and its chronicles. Without this