haven't had no word from the Lord."

His face was livid; in the effort to make his explanation, whether
shaken by the recollections he described or by fear of her contempt,
she saw that his limbs were actually trembling as if with cold.

"There ain't many men, Mrs. Halsey, as would stay and face that sort of
music when they could get away, but if it was to do good to mortal
creature I'd think about staying, but it's t'other way. It's me and
Rigdon as has been advertised as working the bank; it's my blood and his
the Gentiles that have our notes are thirsting for. Suppose we stayed
and they took to mauling us again, wouldn't the Saints here take to
fighting to protect us? I've taught them to fight in self-defence and
they'd fight to defend me. God knows there are better men than we are
that would be killed right and left if we stayed, and 'twould be no use,
for the Gentile numbers would overpower us. 'Tain't no use. When I found
to-day that there wasn't a chance of staving off the bankruptcy I sent
Emmar and the children and Rigdon's folks off in a close waggon after
sundown. Rigdon's rid off by another road, and I've got my horse ready
and ought to be gone. And there ain't a man in Kirtland as will know
which way we've gone by to-morrow, so that no Saint will need to do any
lying on my account."

"You are very sorry for the mistakes you have made about the bank," she
said pityingly.

He gave another short laugh that, like the first, was less like a laugh
than a sob.

"I guess I'm sorry enough, but I don't know whether it's repentance, for
I thought I'd done all just what the Lord told me to do, but at times
like these I'm not so sure of the revelations I hear in my soul, but I
know I thought I was right at the time; but as for being sorry, if ye
had the burden of all these children of Israel in the desert on your
heart, knowing that ye had brought them into the desert, and brought the
hunger and the thirst and the pestilence and the enemy upon them, and
weren't quite sure at times whether the thing that ye saw leading was
the Lord's pillar of cloud or the devil's, and if ye was now being cast
out before the face of men and called a liar and a swindler, and without
a dollar in the world, I guess ye'd know what it felt like to feel
sorry."

The room was a long one; in the fore part the glow from the hearth made
clear the baby's cradle, the table set for Halsey's supper, the close
shutters of the front windows, but