As the son ate, the girl busied herself at the mother’s pillow, while the father talked and ruminated by intervals,—a text, a word of cheer to the wasted mother, incidents of old days, memories of early revivals. In 1828, he had hailed Dylkes, the “Leatherwood God,” as the real Messiah. Then he had been successively a Freewill Baptist, a Winebrennerian, a Universalist, a Disciple, and finally an eloquent and moving preacher in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Now he was a wild-eyed old dreamer with a high, narrow forehead depressed at the temples, enfeebled, living much in the past. Once his voice would be low, as if he spoke only to himself; again it would rise in warning to an evil generation. “The end of the world is at hand, laddie,” he began, after looking fondly at his son for a time. “Joseph said there are those now living who shall not taste of death till Jesus comes. And then, oh, then—the great white day! There is strong delusion among the wicked in the day in which we live, but the seed of Abraham, the royal seed, the blessed seed of the Lord, shall be told off to its separate glory. The Lord will spread the curtains of Zion and gather it out to the fat valleys of Ephraim, and there, with resurrected bodies it shall possess the purified earth. I shall be away for a time before then, laddie—and the dear mother here. Our crowns have been earned and will not long be withheld. But you will be there for the glory of it, and who more deserves it?” “I pray to be made worthy of the exaltation, Father.” “You are, laddie. The word and the light came to me when I preached another faith—for the spirit of Thomas Campbell had aforetime moved me—but you, laddie, you have been bred in the word and the truth. The Lord, as a mark of his favour, has kept you from the contamination of doubters, infidels, heretics, and apostates. You have been educated under the care of the priesthood, close here in Nauvoo the Beautiful, and who could more deserve the fulness of thrones, dominions, and of power—who of all those whose number the after-time shall unfold?” He turned appealingly to the mother, whose fevered eyes rested fondly upon her boy as she nodded confirmation of the words.