Our friend really began to like the man, and could not refrain from looking sadly at him, knowing but too well that the Mormon was so closely involved in his own fate that he would be the first to fall when the attempt, which he felt certain his own friends would make to release him, came off.
The officer, noticing these looks of his prisoner, asked him if he were thinking of the near approach of his death.
“No,” replied he in a melancholy tone, “I was but regretting the certainty that you yourself would die before I should.”
“What,” said the other mockingly, “are you too a false prophet?”
“Would to God I might be in this case,” said Grenville, holding out his hand to his jailer; “but I fear it is truth I speak. Never mind; you are a brave man—and what is written, is written for you and for me; so don’t let us trouble our heads about it till the time comes.”
The pair soon gained the town, and Grenville heard his friend the guard call a number of his companions together and detail all the prisoner had said with respect to their “holy wonder;” and after that first one and then another would ask him, himself, leading questions on the government of his own country, England, and so forth; and it struck our hero forcibly that had he but a week or two before him he might, in spite of the old prophet’s precaution, get up a very pretty little insurrection against the mystic Holy Three.
He did go so far as to say that if the Mormons were men they had only one course open to them, and that was to dethrone the wretched impostor who was now at their head, and re-instate their beautiful queen, the “Rose of Sharon,” the Flower of East Utah, in her hereditary rights; and he noticed that these words seemed to find favour among the guards, though no reply was made to the remark.
Grenville next endeavoured to find out if the community had some concealed way out of their secret territory. This end he attained by chaffing them about knocking down with their own hands their only ladder of communication with the outside world. The men, however, were perfectly frank, and at once admitted that they had done so, giving him likewise details of the work of reconstructing the stairway, which was to be commenced as soon as the invaders were satisfactorily disposed of.
Asked how they accounted for the continued supply of game, the Mormons said they could not account for it at all; but their prophets had told them that the good gifts of Heaven should be thankfully accepted, and not refused simply because the eyes of blinded mortals could not detect the precise manner of their arrival. A very strict inquiry had nevertheless been made into the matter, and a body of men appointed to scour the country in every direction, with the view of ascertaining if there were any other way of ingress into the territory; but after two months of careful searching the band had returned with the news that they were absolutely walled in on every side by impenetrable and inaccessible rocks and mountains.
Grenville was, however, by no means satisfied with this statement, as, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, his common-sense told him that the herds of game must have some way of getting in at certain seasons of the year or the animals would long ago have been exterminated. Still, cudgel his brains as he would, no solution of the difficulty presented itself to him.