“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.”
“Aye, to the Rockies or beyond, even to the Pacific. Joseph prophesied it—where we shall be left in peace until the great day.”
The young man glanced quickly up.