thermometer marked twenty-five degrees below zero; nearly all the tent pins were broken, and nearly forty soldiers and teamsters were on the sick list, most of them being frost-bitten. The earth has no more lifeless, treeless, grassless desert; it contains scarcely a wolf to glut itself on the hundreds of dead and frozen animals which, for thirty miles, nearly blocked the road." Such was the condition in which this flower of the American army found itself when about ready, as they supposed, to enter the Valley of the Great Salt Lake and subdue a handful of unoffending and simple-hearted people. Something was certainly done by the small band of hardy men who followed and surrounded the army with harassing circumstances; but they did little compared with the forces which were brought to bear by the God of nature, who undertook to fight this battle according to His own good pleasure and plan. XII. THE FRIEND OF BRIGHAM YOUNG The bright fire upon the wide hearthstone in Aunt Clara's sitting room in Great Salt Lake City seemed all the brighter to the young man who opened the cheerful green door late in the afternoon on the 24th day of February, 1858. The slow moving figure of Aunt Clara swung around from her busy loom in the corner, as she looked to see who her visitor was. "You, John? I thought you were in Echo Canyon or in San Bernardino, or on the Southern Mexican route." "So I was till this morning; I have come to see if you will take a stranger for a few days, who is sent to you by Governor Young." "Anyone sent from President Young is welcome, and John, anyone you bring is welcome also." John Stevens thanked her and added that he would return shortly with his guest, and then departed as silently and swiftly as he had come. "Ellen," called Aunt Clara to the girl whose spinning wheel whirred from the kitchen, "bring some more wood for the fire-place, and put the clean white blankets in the front bedroom. Have we enough white flour to make some biscuits?" Ellen came into the sitting-room, followed by her friend Dian, who was busily engaged in knitting at some large, coarse but warm socks. Dian did not stop as she walked, but knitted away as if life depended upon the "stunt" being accomplished before the dusk should come upon her. "Why do you want to make biscuits tonight, Aunt Clara?" asked Ellen.