Yes, Lilian! to the last hour of my life! Close to my bosom shall it lie--that simple souvenir of your maiden love. Sacred page! Transcript of sweet truth--hallowed by the first 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 knowledge, he will be ill able to comprehend the peculiar bitterness, that in that hour, wrapped and wrung my soul. Accident had made me acquainted with the Mormon religion; not with its tenets--for it has none--but with the moral idiosyncrasy of its most eminent "apostles," as well as that of its humbler devotees--two very different classes of "Saints."