of her ready speech.

"That woman of yours," said this observant friend, "sure takes large
pie-bites out of any little talk that happens to get going."

"She _does_ have the gift of continuance," her husband had admitted. But
he had added, hastily, "Though her heart is perfect with the Lord."

The fact that she was sealed to him for eternity, and that she believed
she would constitute one of his claims to exaltation in the celestial
world, were often matters of pious speculation with him. He wondered if
he had done right by her. She deserved a husband who would be saved into
the kingdom, while he who had married her was irrevocably lost.

There had been a time when he read with freshened hope the promises of
forgiveness in that strange New Testament. Once he had even believed
that these might save him; that he was again numbered with the elect.
But when this belief had grown firm, so that he could seem to rest his
weight upon it, he felt it fall away to nothing under him, and the truth
he had divined that day in the desert was again bared before him. He saw
that how many times soever God might forgive the sins of a man, it would
avail that man nothing unless he could forgive himself. He knew at last
that in his own soul was fixed a gauge of right, unbending and
implacable when wrong had been done, waiting to be reckoned with at the
very last even though the great God should condone his sin. It seemed to
him that, however surely his endowments took him through the gates of
the Kingdom, with whatsoever power they raised him to dominion; even
though he came into the Father's presence and sat a throne of his own by
the side of Joseph and Brigham, that there would still ring in his ears
the cries of those who had been murdered at the priesthood's command;