there, and one other, the sister, happy, beautiful as her in the Song of
Songs, when the brutes came--"

"Don't, father--stop there--you are making my throat shut against the
food."

"Then you came to Far West in time to see Joseph and his brethren sold
to the mobocrats by that devil's traitor, Hinkle,--you saw the fleeing
Saints forced to leave their all, hunted out of Missouri into
Illinois--their houses burned, the cattle stolen, their wives and
daughters--"

"Don't, father! Be quiet again. You and mother must be fit for our
journey, as fit as we younger folk."

He glanced fondly across the table, where the girl had leaned her chin
in her hands to watch him, speculatively. She avoided his eyes.

"Yes, yes," assented the old man, "and you know of our persecutions
here--how we had to finish the temple with our arms by our sides, even
as the faithful finished the walls of Jerusalem--and how we were driven
out by night--"

"Quiet, father!"

"Yes, yes. Ah, this gathering out! How far shall we go, laddie?"

"Four hundred miles to winter quarters. From there no one yet knows,--a
thousand, maybe two thousand."