The Wild Ram of the Mountains thought all proselyting should cease in view of the approaching end; that the Elders on mission should withdraw from the vineyard, shake the dust from their feet, and seal up the rebellious Gentiles to damnation.

To this Elder Beil Wardle had replied, somewhat testily: "Well, now, since these valleys of Ephraim have got a little fattened a whole lot of us have got the sweeny, and our skins are growing too tight on our flesh." He had been unable to comprehend that the Gentiles were a rejected lot, the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

On this occasion it had required all the tact of Elder Rae to soothe the two good men into an amiable discussion of the time when Sidney Rigdon went to the third heaven and talked face to face with God.

They had agreed in the end, however, that they were both of the royal seed of Abraham, and were on the grand turnpike to exaltation.
To these discussions and sermons the child, Prudence, listened with intense interest, looking forward to the last day as an occasion productive of excitement even superior to that of her trips to Salt Lake City, where her father went to attend the October conference, and where she was taken to the theatre.
Of any world outside the valley she knew but little.

Somewhere, far over to the east, was a handful of lost souls for whom she sometimes indulged in a sort of luxurious pity.