They might have made war; indeed, many of the revelations to Joseph discriminated even between murder and that murder in which innocent blood should be shed; but the truth was plain.

They had shed innocent blood that day in the Meadows.
Now the Lord's favour was withdrawn and His coming deferred, perhaps another thousand years.

The torture of the thing came back to him with all its early colouring, so that his days and nights were full of anguish.

He no longer dared open the Bible to that reddened page.

The cries already rang in his ears, and he knew not what worse torture might come if he looked again upon the stain; nor could he free himself from these by the old expedient of prayer, for he could no longer pray with an honest heart; he was no longer unselfish, could no longer kneel in perfect submission; he was wholly bound to this child of her mother, and the peace of absolute and utter sacrifice could not come back to him.
Full of unrest, feeling that somehow the end, at least for him, could not be far off, he went north to the April Conference.