Songs, when the brutes came—” 

 “Don’t, father—stop there—you are making my throat shut against the food.” 

 “Then you came to Far West in time to see Joseph and his brethren sold to the mobocrats by that devil’s traitor, Hinkle,—you saw the fleeing Saints forced to leave their all, hunted out of Missouri into Illinois—their houses burned, the cattle stolen, their wives and daughters—” 

 “Don’t, father! Be quiet again. You and mother must be fit for our journey, as fit as we younger folk.” 

 He glanced fondly across the table, where the girl had leaned her chin in her hands to watch him, speculatively. She avoided his eyes. 

 “Yes, yes,” assented the old man, “and you know of our persecutions here—how we had to finish the temple with our arms by our sides, even as the faithful finished the walls of Jerusalem—and how we were driven out by night—” 

 “Quiet, father!” 

 “Yes, yes. Ah, this gathering out! How far shall we go, laddie?” 

 “Four hundred miles to winter quarters. From there no one yet knows,—a thousand, maybe two thousand.” 

 “Aye, to the Rockies or beyond, even to the Pacific. Joseph prophesied it—where we shall be left in peace until the great day.” 

 The young man glanced quickly up. 

 “Or have time to grow mighty, if we should not be let alone. Surely this is the last time the Lord would have us meek under the mob.” 

 “Ho, ho! As you were twelve years ago, trudging by my side, valiant to fight if the Lord but wills it! But have no fear, boy. This time we go far beyond all that may tempt the spoiler. We go into the desert, where no humans are but the wretched red Lamanites; no beasts but the wild ones of four feet to hunger for our flesh; no verdure, no nourishment to sustain us save the manna from on high,—a region of unknown perils and unnamed deserts. Truly we make the supreme test. I do not overcolour it. Prudence, hand me yonder scrap-book, there on the secretary. Here I shall read you the words of no less a one than Senator Daniel Webster on the floor of the Senate but a few months agone. He spoke on the proposal to fix a mail-route from Missouri to the mouth of the Columbia River in that far-off land. Hear this great man who knows whereof he speaks. He is very bitter. 

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