I am not hungry." But she coaxed and commanded, with her hands upon his shoulders, and he let himself be persuaded to taste the bread and meat.

After a few mouthfuls, taken with obvious disrelish, she detected the awakening fervour of a famished man, and knew she would have to urge no more.
As the son ate, the girl busied herself at the mother's pillow, while the father talked and ruminated by intervals,--a text, a word of cheer to the wasted mother, incidents of old days, memories of early revivals.
In 1828, he had hailed Dylkes, the "Leatherwood God," as the real Messiah.

Then he had been successively a Freewill Baptist, a Winebrennerian, a Universalist, a Disciple, and finally an eloquent and moving preacher in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Now he was a wild-eyed old dreamer with a high, narrow forehead depressed at the temples, enfeebled, living much in the past.

Once his voice would be low, as if he spoke only to himself; again it would rise in warning to an evil generation.
"The end of the world is at hand, laddie," he began, after looking fondly at his son for a time.