"Come and kiss yoo papa," yelled out the piping chorus of children's voices, while Charlie recited dramatically, "The boy stood on the burning deck," with his own absurd modifications of the original text.
Dian was angry with the children, thus to taunt their helpless and now uncomfortable friend, but the children only cried out the refrain, again and again, and that piping treble swept over the waters, as the poor youth left behind waded up on to the shore of the island and turned his back resentfully upon his jeering tormentors.
At that moment, John himself rounded the island with his own raft and picked up the discomfited youth, whose once brilliant red shirt, freshly ironed that morning by Rachel's kind hands, was once more faded and streaked, and added to that humiliation was the awful discomfiture of those dripping, wet, and heavy leathern pantaloons, bordered with dripping fringe. Surely his punishment was very heavy.
"Hurry home," said John, kindly, as they landed, "and get on some dry clothing."
As poor Boyle plunged and swashed on his hurried homeward way, the cluck of those swishing breeches and the sluice of his brand new but water-filled shoes made it difficult for even Ellen to keep herself from joining the children in their peals of naughty merriment.
Yet, with all the sundry small mishaps, surely there had never been so happy and so blissful a day vouchsafed to the "Mormon" refugees in all their tempestuous short existence.
But the echo calls and calls from peak to peak and cries the challenge out to happiness and freedom. And who shall answer, O spirit of a nameless past, so long pent up in these hoary mountain vales!
V.
"THE ARMY IS UPON US"
Oyez!!