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Show THE MORMON LION great a betrayal of eagerness. The ladies at once set about their preparations for the meal. The doctor and I reclined in the shade, and he conversed pleasantly on worldly subjects. I said little, being vastly more interested in watching t~e gracef~1 movements of Miss Lucy. After all their hard tnp across Iowa in the heat and dust of late summer, both she and her mother still retained the almost fastidious nicety and daintiness of gentlewomen. Such a sight was a rare treat to one like myself, whose boyhood had been spent on the frontier and who had since found little time and less opportumty to associate with ladies. Beyond a courteous inquiry as to my profession, the doctor was entirely impersonal in his talk. Not so his wife. As we sat down to the frugal but savoury dinner served on a small folding camp-table, she addressed me gravely : " Pardon me but you said that your mother died in the Kingdo~. Will you not tell us about it and why you did not remain with the Saints? " ' It is an experience, madam, that for various reasons I have never mentioned to anyone," I replied. " But now that time has somewhat dulled the painfulness of the memory, I see no reason why I should not speak of it to members of the Church of Jesus Christ. First, you should know that I was born in the West and lived most of my boyhood in Iowa while it was yet Indian country." " Oh! " exclaimed Miss Lucy, her eyes widening. "You lived among the wild Lamanites?" " Among them, but not with them. My father had a trading post, which later became our farm. In 1844, when I was thirteen, Apostle Parley Pratt came out our way from Nauvoo, and my mother was converted and baptized by him. That same autumn she fell into a declme. Though not a convert himself, my father respected her religion. After some THE MORMON LION IS hesitation, he yielded to her wish to visit his cousin Amanda Chilcott at Nauvoo." " She desired to be near the divinely inspired Prophet Joseph," surmised Mrs. Neville. " That is the truth. Her trust was that he could cure her. But even he--" I choked at the memory of that bitter grief. " Though so young, I came all the way to Nauvoo alone with her, for my father was unable to leave his farm. The Prophet was very attentive to my mother and came often to the house of Cousin Amanda, whose husband, William Chilcott, was on a mission to England. " Under the ministrations of the Prophet, my mother grew so strong in faith that with the coming of spring she became convinced of hercomplete recovery. This she wrote to my father in joyful argument why he should remove to Nauvoo and join the Saints. Less than a month later she-left this life ... . William Chilcott, who had recently returned from his mission, had been very kind to my mother, but he was across the river in Missouri at the time of my great loss. "He was still away when my father came ferrying across the Mississippi to take my mother home. He took me and-he took her. Cousin Amanda was so scandalized at his refusal to permit a burial in the consecrated ground of Nauvoo that she stood dumbfounded in the street before her front gate while my father and I drove away with-our dear one." "Your father was not in the Kingdom!" murmured Miss Lucy in an awed tone. " He was a !iood man- in his way, but my mother had died in spite of her faith and he thought he had cause to dislike the Saints. He hurried back across the Mississippi and away from Nauvoo as fast as his big mules could drag the wagon along the miry roads. Those were the days shortly before the murder of Joseph and. the expulsion of the Saints from Nauvoo. there was great bitterness between the Mormons |