“If you had questioned the right person sharply enough, you might have had an answer as to why you were sent.” 

 “What do you mean? How could I have questioned? How could I have rebelled against the stepping-stone of my exaltation?” 

 His face relaxed a little, and he concluded almost quizzically: 

 “Was not Satan hurled from high heaven for resisting authority?” 

 She pouted, caught him by the lapels of his coat and prettily tried to shake him. 

 “There—horrid!—you’re preaching again. Please remember you’re not on mission now. Indeed, sir, you were called back for being too—too—why, do you know, even old Elder Munsel, ‘Fire-brand Munsel,’ they call him, said you were too fanatical.” 

 His face grew serious. 

 “I’m glad to be called back to you, at any rate,—and yet, think of all those poor benighted infidels who believe there are no longer revelations nor prophecies nor gifts nor healings nor speaking with tongues,—this miserable generation so blind in these last days when the time of God’s wrath is at hand. Oh, I burn in my heart for them, night after night, suffering for the tortures that must come upon them—thrice direful because they have rejected the message of Moroni and trampled upon the priesthood of high heaven, butchering the Saints of the Most High, and hunting the prophets of God like Ahab of old.” 

 “Oh, dear, please stop it! You sound like swearing!” Her two hands were closing her ears in a pretty pretense. 

 He seemed hardly to hear her, but went on excitedly: 

 “Yet I have done what man could do. I am never done doing. I would gladly give my body to be burned a thousand times if it would avail to save them into the Kingdom. I have preached the word tirelessly—fanatically, they say—but only as it burned in my bones. I have told them of visions, dreams, revelations, miracles, and all the mercies of this last dispensation. And I have prayed and fasted. Just now coming from winter quarters, when I could not preach, I held twelve fasts and twelve vigils. You will say it has weakened me, but it has weakened only the bonds that the flesh puts upon the spirit. Even so, I fell short of my vision—my tabernacle of flesh must have been too much profaned, though how I cannot dream—believe me, I have kept myself as high and clean as I knew. Yet there was promise. 

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