thrill him since he first heard it broached,—the mad plan of a handful of persecuted believers, setting out from civilisation to found Zion in the wilderness,—to go forth a thousand miles from Christendom with nothing but stout arms and a very living faith in the God of Israel, and in Joseph Smith as his prophet, meeting death in famine, plagues, and fevers, freezing in the snows of the mountains, thirsting to death on the burning deserts, being devoured by ravening beasts or tortured to death by the sinful Lamanites; but persisting through it all with dauntless courage to a final triumph so glorious that the very Gods would be compelled to applaud the spectacle of their devoted heroism. 

 And now he was face to face with the awful, the glorious, the divinely ordained fact. It was like standing before the Throne of Grace itself. Out over that western skyline was a spot, now hidden and defended by all the powers of Satan, where the Ten Tribes would be restored, where Zion would be rebuilt, where Christ would reign personally on earth a thousand years, and from whence the earth would be renewed and receive again its paradisiac glory. The thought overwhelmed. 

 “If we could only start at once!” he said to Bishop Wright, who had read the revelation with him. But the canny Bishop’s religious zeal was henceforth to be tempered by the wisdom of the children of darkness. 

 “No more travelling in this kind of a time for the Saints,” the Bishop replied. “We got our full of that when we first left Nauvoo. We had to scrape snow from the ground and set up tents when it was fifteen or twenty below zero, and nine children born one night in that weather. Of course it was better than staying at Nauvoo to be shot; but no one is going to shoot us here, so here we’ll tarry till grass grows and water runs.” 

 “But there was a chance to show devotion, Brother Seth. Think how precious it must have been in the sight of the Lord.” 

 “Well, the Lord knows we’re devoted now, so we’ll wait till it fairs up. We’ll have Zion built in good time and a good gospel fence built around it, elk-high and bull-tight, like we used to say in Missouri. But it’s a long ways over yender, and while I ain’t ever had any revelations myself, I’m pretty sure the Lord means to have me toler’bly well fed, and my back kept bone-dry on the way. And we got to have fat horses and fat cattle, not these bony critters with no juice in ’em. Did you hear what Brother Heber got off the other day? He butchered a beef and was sawing it up when Brother Brigham passed by. ‘Looks hard, Brother Heber,’ says Brother Brigham. ‘Hard, Brother Brigham? Why, I’ve 

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