“I sympathize with you,” he spoke gently, “and my sympathy and word shall help you.  We do not welcome strangers among us, for strangers have usually proved themselves our enemies and have done us wrong.  But to you I give the freedom of our kingdom.  Search where you will, at what hours you will, and when you have found a single proof that your stolen property is among my people—­when you have seen a face that you recognize as one of the robbers, return to me and I shall make restitution and punish the evil-doers.”

So intensely he spoke, so filled with reason and truth were his words, that Nathaniel thrust out his hand in token of acceptance of the king’s terms.  And as Strang gripped that hand Captain Plum saw the young girl’s face over the prophet’s shoulder—­a face, white as death in its terror, that told him all he had heard was a lie.

“And when you have done with my people,” continued the king, “you will go among that other race, along the mainland, where men have thrown off the restraints of society to give loose reign to lust and avarice; where the Indian is brutified that his wife may be intoxicated by compulsion and prostituted by violence before his eyes; where the forest cabins and the streets of towns are filled with half-breeds; where there stalk wretches with withered and tearless eyes, who are in nowise troubled by recollection of robbery, rape and murder.  And there you will find whom you are looking for!”

Strang had risen to his feet.  His eyes blazed with the fire of smothered hatred and passion and his great voice rolled through his beard, tremulous with excitement, but still deep and rich, like the booming of some melodious instrument.  He flung aside his hat as he paced back and forth; his shaggy hair fell upon his shoulders; huge veins stood out upon his forehead—­and Nathaniel sat mute as he watched this lion of a man whose great throat quivered with the power that might have stirred a nation—­that might have made him president instead of king.  He waited for the thunder of that throat and his nerves keyed themselves to meet its bursting passion.  But when Strang spoke again it was in a voice as soft and as gentle as a woman’s.

“Those are the men who have vilified us, Captain Plum; who have covered us with crimes that we have never committed; who have driven our people into groups that they may be free from depredation; who watch like vultures to despoil our women; wild wifeless men, Captain Plum, who have left families and character behind them and who have sought the wilderness to escape the penalties of law and order.  It is they who would destroy us.  Go among my own people first, Captain Plum, and find your lost property if you can; and if you can not discover it where in seven years not one child has been born out of wedlock, seek among the Lamanites—­and my sheriffs shall follow where you place the crime!”