From that time his improvement was more rapid, although there were seven or eight running sores on his leg, and they kept him very weak. When he was able to hobble about on crutches, he used to have to carry his leg in a sling, suspended from his shoulder. When the limb hung down without a sling, it was so far from being straight that the toes were fully six inches from the ground, and the leg was much more painful than when suspended. How, under such circumstances, he was ever going to support his family, to say nothing of going to Utah, was beyond his power to foresee, and had it not been for the heavenly assurance he had received he would probably have lost hope. About that time he met a man who claimed to be skilled in the art of healing, who prescribed certain herbs for his use, and told him to fill a bottle with angle worms and stand it in the sunlight until the worms turned to oil, and then rub the oil on his leg. He followed the directions, and his leg and health improved. After a few months he could touch the toes of his lame limb to the ground, and dispense with the bandages and sling. The family removed to a stone quarry, and his wife boarded the men employed there at $10.00 per month each, and the family lived upon such scraps as were left from the boarders' table. Thomas was ambitious to do something, and tried sawing wood, at 75c per cord, and, though the exertion made his leg pain him much worse, he persevered, his wife quitting her housework from time to time to do the lifting for him, as he couldn't do it himself. Then he tried driving team to haul wood for a lime kiln. The men who accompanied him had to lift him on and off the wagon, as well as to load and unload the wagon for him, but this they did out of sheer sympathy for him. In the spring of 1858 he moved back to the farm which he had lost, through sickness, the owner being willing to let the family occupy the house, and pay his wife for boarding men he employed at farming, while Thomas fed the pigs and did odd jobs. On the 15th of September, his third child, David, was born. The larger the family grew the less likely it really seemed to be that they would ever reach the mountains, but Thomas fondly clung to the promises made him, that he should do so, and his faith in the Lord never wavered.