their leaders corrupted.

Even of Brigham, the daring already told tales that promised this last
thing should come to pass; how he was become fat-souled, grasping, and
tricky, using his sacred office to enlarge his wealth, seizing the
canons with their precious growths of wood, the life-giving waterways,
and the herding-grounds; taking even from the tithing, of which he
rendered no stewardship, and hiding away millions of the dollars for
which the faithful had toiled themselves into desert graves. Truly,
thought Joel Rae, that bloody day in the Meadows had been cunningly
avenged.

One morning, a few weeks after he had reached home from the north, he
received a call from Seth Wright.

"Here's a letter Brother Brigham wanted me to be sure and give you,"
said this good man. "He said he didn't know you was allowing to start
back so soon, or he'd have seen you in person."

He took the letter and glanced at the superscription, written in
Brigham's rather unformed but plain and very decided-looking hand.

"So you've been north, Brother Seth? What do you think of Israel there?"

The views of the Wild Ram of the Mountains partook in certain ways of
his own discouragement.

"Zion has run to seed, Brother Rae; the rank weeds of Babylon is a-goin'
to choke it out, root and branch! We ain't got no chance to live a pure
and Godly life any longer, with railroads coming in, and Gentiles with
their fancy contraptions. It weakens the spirit, and it plays the very
hob with the women. Soon as they git up there now, and see them new
styles from St. Looey or Chicago, they git downright daft. No more
homespun for 'em, no more valley tan, no more parched corn for coffee,
nor beet molasses nor unbolted flour. Oh, I know what I'm talkin'
about."

The tone of the good man became as of one who remembers hurts put upon
his own soul. He continued:

"You no sooner let a woman git out of the wagon there now than she's
crazy for a pink nubia, and a shell breastpin, and a dress-pattern, and
a whole bolt of factory and a set of chiny cups and saucers and some of
this here perfumery soap. And _that_ don't do 'em. Then they let out a
yell for varnished rockin'-cheers with flowers painted all over 'em in
different colours, and they tell you they got to have bristles
carpet--bristles on it that long, prob'ly!" The injured man indicated a
length of some eighteen or twenty inches.

"Of course all them grand things would please our feelings, but th