They took up the march with new courage; but then in a few days came a new danger to threaten them,—­the cold.  A rule made by Brigham had limited each cart’s outfit of clothing and bedding to seventeen pounds.  This had now become insufficient.  As they advanced up the Sweetwater, the mountains on either side took on snow.  Frequent wading of the streams chilled them.  Morning would find them numb, haggard, spiritless, unfitted for the march of the day.

A week of this cold weather, lack of food, and overwork produced their effect.  The old and the weak became too feeble to walk; then they began to die, peacefully, smoothly, as a lamp ceases to burn when the oil is gone.  At first the deaths occurred irregularly; then they were frequent; soon it was rarely that they left a camp-ground without burying one or more of their number.

Nor was death long confined to the old and the infirm.  Young men, strong at the start, worn out now by the rigours of the march, began to drop.  A father would pull his cart all day, perhaps with his children in it, and die at night when camp was reached.  Each day lessened their number.

But they died full of faith, murmuring little, and having for their chief regret, apparently, that they must be left on the plains or mountains, instead of resting in the consecrated ground of Zion—­this, and that they must die without looking upon the face of their prophet, seer, and revelator.

Their leader cheered them as best he could.  He was at first puzzled at the severity of their hardships in the face of past prophecies.  But light at last came to him.  He stopped one day to comfort a wan, weak man who had halted in dejection by the road.

“You have had trouble?” he asked him, and the man had answered, wearily: 

“No, not what you could call trouble.  When we left Florence my mother could walk eighteen or twenty miles a day.  She did it for weeks.  But then she wore out, and I had to haul her in my cart; but it was only for three days.  She gave up and died before we started out, the morning of the fourth day.  We buried her by the roadside without a coffin—­that was hard, to put her old, gray head right down into the ground with no protection.  It made us mourn, for she had always been such a good friend.  Then we went on a few days, and my sister gave out.  I carried her in the cart a few days, but she died too.  Then my youngest child, Ephraim, died.  Then I fell sick myself, and my wife has pushed the cart with me in it for two days.  She looked so tired to-day that I got out to rest her.  But we don’t call it trouble, only for the cold—­my wife has a chill every time she has to wade one of those icy streams.  She’s not very used to rough life.”

As he listened to the man’s tale, the truth came to him in a great light.  Famine not sufficing, the Lord was sending this further affliction upon them.  He was going to goad them into asserting and maintaining their independence of his enemies, the Gentiles.  The inspiration of this thought nerved him anew.  Though they all died, to the last child, he would live to carry back to Zion the message that now burned within him.  They had temporised with the Gentile and had grown lax among themselves.  They must be aroused to repentance, and God would save him to do the work.