"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 us to hasten and
give battle so he could fight upon the Lord's side. Twelve hundred miles
he walked to put back in their homes the persecuted Saints of Jackson
County. But, ah! There he saw liberty strangled in her sanctuary. Do you
mind, laddie, how in '38 we were driven by the mob from Jackson across
the river into Clay County? how they ran off our cattle, stole our
grain? how your poor old mother's mother died from exposure that night
in the rain and sleet? how we lived on mast and corn, the winter, in
tents and a few dugouts and rickety huts--we who had the keys of St.
Peter and the gifts of the apostolic age? Do you mind the sackings and
burnings at Adam-Ondi-Ahman? Do you mind the wife of Joseph's brother,
Don Carlos, she that was made by the soldiers to wade Grand River with
two helpless babes in her arms? They would not even let her warm
herself, before she started, at the flames of her own hut they had
fired. And, laddie, you mind Haun's mill. Ah, the bloody day!--you were