Fiction > Book editions > London, 1885 - Dynamiter

22 NEW AKALIAX NIGHTS.
' Ha ! ' said Doctor Grierson, ' you know botany ! '
' Not 1 alone/ returned my father, lowering his voice ;
' for see where these have been scraped aAvay. 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 educa-
tion, 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 circum-
stances, 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 either divine or
human ; my father, for her sake, determined to renounce
his ambitions and abjure his faith ; and a week had not
yet passed upon the march l)efore he had resigned from
his party, accepted the Mormon doctrine, and received the
promise of my mother's hand on the arrival of the party
at Salt Lake.
The marriage took place, and I was its only offspring.
My father prospered exceedingly in his affairs, remained
faithful to my mother ; and though you may wonder to
hear it, I believe there were few happier homes in any
country than that in which J saw the light and grew to
girlhood. We were, indeed, and in spite of all our
wealth, avoided as heretics and half-believers l^y the more
precise and pious of the faithful : Young himself, that
formidable tyrant, was known to look askance upon my
father's riches ; but of this I had no guess. I dwelt, in-