herself at the mother's pillow, while
the father talked and ruminated by intervals,--a text, a word of cheer
to the wasted mother, incidents of old days, memories of early revivals.
In 1828, he had hailed Dylkes, the "Leatherwood God," as the real
Messiah. Then he had been successively a Freewill Baptist, a
Winebrennerian, a Universalist, a Disciple, and finally an eloquent and
moving preacher in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Now
he was a wild-eyed old dreamer with a high, narrow forehead depressed at
the temples, enfeebled, living much in the past. Once his voice would be
low, as if he spoke only to himself; again it would rise in warning to
an evil generation.

"The end of the world is at hand, laddie," he began, after looking
fondly at his son for a time. "Joseph said there are those now living
who shall not taste of death till Jesus comes. And then, oh, then--the
great white day! There is strong delusion among the wicked in the day in
which we live, but the seed of Abraham, the royal seed, the blessed seed
of the Lord, shall be told off to its separate glory. The Lord will
spread the curtains of Zion and gather it out to the fat valleys of
Ephraim, and there, with resurrected bodies it shall possess the
purified earth. I shall be away for a time before then, laddie--and the
dear mother here. Our crowns have been earned and will not long be
withheld. But you will be there for the glory of it, and who more
deserves it?"

"I pray to be made worthy of the exaltation, Father."

"You are, laddie. The word and the light came to me when I preached
another faith--for the spirit of Thomas Campbell had aforetime moved
me--but you, laddie, you have been bred in the word and the truth. The
Lord, as a mark of his favour, has kept you from the contamination of
doubters, infidels, heretics, and apostates. You have been educated
under the care of the priesthood, close here in Nauvoo the Beautiful,
and who could more deserve the fulness of thrones, dominions, and of
power--who of all those whose number the after-time shall unfold?"

He turned appealingly to the mother, whose fevered eyes rested fondly
upon her boy as she nodded confirmation of the words.

"Did he not march all the way from Kirtland to Missouri with us in
'34--the youngest soldier in the whole army of Zion? How old,
laddie?--twelve, was it?--so he marched a hundred miles for every one of
his little years--and so valiant--none more so--begging