sinners are sinners, middling folks are
middling, just the same whether they have three 'revelations' a day
apiece, or one once a year, or none at all. You're fretting because you
think a righteous man might do something wicked, thinking that the voice
of the Lord had told him. Not a bit of it! The Lord will take care of
his own when they're a little off their heads just as much as at any
other time."

What few worldly goods Susannah chose to keep were packed in two single
waggons, Halsey driving the one, and Elvira and Susannah by turns
driving the other and holding the child. Their long journey through the
month of June was the most perfect pleasure that Susannah and Angel ever
enjoyed together, the long nightmare of the last months at Kirtland left
behind for ever, the stage of the future veiled, and the lineaments of
natural hope painted upon the drop-curtain. A loving fate sent fresh
showers on their behoof during the nights, which laid the dust and
dressed field and forest in their daintiest array. The child, who had
been pining somewhat, affected by the anxiety in the Kirtland home,
became lusty and merry.

"If it wasn't that we are shortly going to be robbed of all we possess
by the Missourians," observed Elvira, "this sort of jog-trot comfort
would become too monotonous, but it adds spice to be saying, so to
speak, 'Hulloa there! we've come to be persecuted too.' Of course we'll
all be killed to begin with, but that's a detail; after that we'll take
our rural mission bespoken for us in the dream."

Susannah actually smiled and called "gee-up" to the horse.

"How very little people know," she observed, "who talk about a
persecution as if it would be a means of grace. There is nothing that so
hardens and degrades as the constant report of barbarities; the more
nearly seen, the more closely inspected, the worse is the moral result."

"Speak for yourself," cooed Elvira, "there's one person out there that
isn't hardened and degraded." She looked with reverent eyes at Angel,
who was walking at the head of the foremost horse, crooning a psalm;
"and, as for me, I still feel myself quite soft, almost pulpy, and on an
elevated plane."

"You could never talk in your irreverent way if you weren't a good deal
hardened and degraded," persisted Susannah affectionately, "and, as for
me, I know that I am. Is there any instance in history of a people
emerging from prolonged persecution with high ideals of love toward
thei