!" cried the man, with a strange smile, "a Mormon missionary if you
will! I value not the title. Were I no more than that, I could have died
without a murmur. But with my life as a physician is bound up the
knowledge of great secrets and the future of man. This it was, when we
missed the caravan, tried for a short cut and wandered to this desolate
ravine, that ate into my soul and, in five days, has changed my beard
from ebony to silver."

"And you are a physician," mused my father, looking on his face, "bound
by oath to succour man in his distresses."

"Sir," returned the Mormon, "my name is Grierson: you will hear that
name again; and you will then understand that my duty was not to this
caravan of paupers, but to mankind at large."

My father turned to the remainder of the party, who were now
sufficiently revived to hear; told them that he would set off at once to
bring help from his own party; "and," he added, "if you be again reduced
to such extremities, look round you, and you will see the earth strewn
with assistance. Here, for instance, growing on the underside of
fissures in this cliff, you will perceive a yellow moss. Trust me, it is
both edible and excellent."

"Ha!" said Dr. Grierson, "you know botany!"

"Not I alone," returned my father, lowering his voice; "for see where
these have been scraped away. Am I right? Was that your secret store?"

My father's comrades, he found, when he returned to the signal-fire, had
made a good day's hunting. They were thus the more easily persuaded to
extend assistance to the Mormon caravan; and the next day beheld both
parties on the march for the frontiers of Utah. The distance to be
traversed was not great; but the nature of the country and the
difficulty of procuring food extended the time to nearly three weeks;
and my father had thus ample leisure to know and appreciate the girl
whom he had succoured. I will call my mother Lucy. Her family name I am
not at liberty to mention; it is one you would know well. By what series
of undeserved calamities this innocent flower of maidenhood, lovely,
refined by education, ennobled by the finest taste, was thus cast among
the horrors of a Mormon caravan, I must not stay to tell you. Let it
suffice, that even in these untoward circumstances, she found a heart
worthy of her own. The ardour of attachment which united my father and
mother was perhaps partly due to the strange manner of their meeting; it
knew, at least, no bounds,