A solitary sleigh; a man with his wife and two servants; a solitary sleigh, and far from home.
That they were not fugitives was apparent in the manly boldness of the chief personage and the somewhat imperial presence of the woman by his side. This personal air of confidence, and a certain conscious importance, were quite marked in both, especially in the man.
They were two decided personages come West. Some event was in their coming. This much the observer might at once have concluded.
There was thus something of mystery about the solitary sleigh and its occupants.
A chariot with a destiny in it—a very primitive chariot of peace, but a chariot with a charm about it. The driver might have felt akin to the boatman who embarked with the imperial Roman: "Fear not—Caesar is in thy boat!"
The sleigh wended its course through the streets of Kirtland until it came to the store of Messrs. Gilbert & Whitney, merchants. There it stopped.
Leaping from the primitive vehicle the personage shook himself lightly, as a young lion rising from his restful attitude; for the man possessed a royal strength and a magnificent physique. In age he was scarcely more than twenty-five; young, but with the stamp of one born to command.
Leaving his wife in the sleigh, he walked, with a royal bearing and a wonderfully firm step, straight into the store of Gilbert & Whitney. His bearing could not be other. He planted his foot as one who never turned back—as one destined to make a mark in the great world at his every footfall. He had come to Kirtland as though to possess it.
Going up to the counter where stood the merchant Whitney, he tapped him with hearty affection on the shoulder as he would have done to a long separated brother or a companion of by-gone years. There was the magnetism of love in his very touch. Love was the wondrous charm that the man carried about him.
"Well, Brother Whitney, how do you do?" was his greeting.