Yet if he had sought to render a little elastic the rigid teachings of the priesthood, he had done so innocently. The foundations of his faith were unshaken; for him the rock upon which his Church was built had never been more stable. As to doubting its firmness, he would as soon have blasphemed the Holy Ghost or disputed the authority of Brigham, with whom was the sacred deposit of doctrine and all temporal and spiritual power. So he sighed often for those Gentile sheep on whom the wrath of God was so soon to fall. Even with the utmost stretching of the divine mercy, the greater part of them must perish; and for the lost souls of these he grieved much and prayed each day. It was more than ten years since that day in the Meadows, and the blight there put upon his person had waxed with each year. His hair showed now but the faintest sprinkle of black, his shoulders were bent and rounded as if bearing invisible burdens, and his face had the look of drooping in grief and despair, as one who was made constantly to look upon all the suffering of all the world. Yet he wore always, except when alone, a not unpleasant little effort of a smile, as if he would conceal his pain. But this deceived few. The women of the settlement had come to call him “the little man of sorrows.” Even his wife, Lorena, had divined that his mind was not one with hers; that, somehow, there was a gulf between them which her best-meant cheerfulness could not span. In a measure she had ceased to try, doing little more than to sing, when he was near, some hymn which she considered suitable to his condition. One favourite at such times began:— “Lord, we are vile, conceived in sin, And born unholy and unclean; Sprung from the man whose guilty fall Corrupts his race and taints us all. “Soon as we draw our infant breath, The seeds of sin grow up for death; The law demands a perfect heart, But we’re defiled in every part.” She would sing many verses of this with appealing unction, so long as he was near; yet when he came upon her unawares he might hear her voicing some cheerful, secular ballad, like— “As I went down to Coffey’s mills Some pleasure for to see, I fell in love with a railroad-er, He fell in love with me.” The stolid Christina listened entranced to all of Lorena’s songs, charmed by the melody not less than she was awed by her sister-wife’s superior gifts of language. The husband, too, listened not without resignation, reflecting that, when Lorena did not sing, she talked. For the unspeaking Christina he had learned to feel an admiration that bordered upon reverence, finding in her silence something spiritually great. Yet of the many-worded Lorena he was never heard to complain through all the years. The nearest he approached to it was on a day when Elder Beil Wardle had sought to condole with him on the affliction of her ready speech.