think he'd been the midwife at the borning of the world, and helped to
nurse it and bring it up--he's that knowing about it. My opinion is he
don't know twice across or straight up about the Lord's secret doings!"

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