The Prophet, in his narrative, quoted in the preceding chapter, tells us that he soon found out the reason why he had received such a strict injunction to carefully guard the Nephite record and the Urim and Thummim; and why it was that Moroni has said that after he (Joseph) had done what was required at his hands, he (Moroni) would call for them. "For no sooner was it known," says Joseph, "that I had them, [the Nephite plates] than the most strenuous exertions were used to get them from me; every stratagem that could be invented was resorted to for that purpose; the persecution became more bitter and severe than before, and multitudes were on the alert continually to get them from me if possible." [1] Rumor, with her thousand tongues, he informs us, was all the time employed circulating tales about his father's family, and about himself; and doubtless much of that misrepresentation which followed the prophet and his father's family throughout his life had its origin about this time. So intolerable at last became the persecution about Manchester that Joseph decided to move with his wife to the home of her parents in Harmony, Susquehannah county, Pennsylvania. Susquehannah county is one of the northern counties of Pennsylvania, and joins Broome county, in the state of New York; and Harmony is a distance of from one hundred to one hundred and fifty miles from Manchester, New York. The young Prophet was in very straitened circumstances when he resolved upon removing to Pennsylvania; but about that time a Mr. Martin Harris, a respectable and well-to-do farmer of Palmyra, New York, called upon the Smith family and gave Joseph fifty dollars to enable him to make the proposed journey. A team and wagon was fitted out, and in company with his wife the Prophet started for Pennsylvania. Enroute he was twice stopped by officers of the law, who, under the power of a search warrant, ransacked his wagon in search of the plates, but in each case they were disappointed, as they did not find them, though the prophet had them concealed among his effects. Arriving in Pennsylvania in the month of December, the Prophet began an examination of the characters engraven upon the plates and copied a considerable number of them. Some of them he translated by means of the Urim and Thummim. In this desultory work he spent the time until the month of February, 1828, when Martin Harris, the gentleman who had befriended him on the eve of his departure from Manchester, arrived at his home in Harmony. This man had become interested in the Prophet and his work and believed him to be in possession of the plates.