The return of Smith and his few followers, and the speedy publication of the first edition of the Book of Mormon, stirred anew the flames of religious excitement. All other sects were at one in decrying "the Mormons," as they now began to be called by their enemies. There was perhaps good reason for intelligent disapprobation, but Understanding was left far behind the flying feet of Zeal, who, torch in hand, rushed from house to house. It was related that Joseph Smith was in the habit of wounding inoffensive sheep and leading them bleeding over the neighbouring hills under the pretext that treasure would be found beneath the spot where they would at last drop exhausted; and there were dark hints concerning benighted travellers who, staying all night at the Smiths' cabin, had seen awful apparitions and been glad to fly from the place, leaving their property behind. There was a story of diabolical influence which Smith had exercised in order to gain the young wife whom he had stolen from her father's roof, and, worse than all, there were descriptions of occult rites carried on in secret places, where the most bloody mysteries of the Mosaic priesthood were horribly travestied by Smith and his friends, Cowdery and Rigdon, in order to dupe the simple into belief in the new revelation.
Ephraim Croom had again withdrawn himself out of hearing of the controversy. Judging that Susannah was sufficiently guarded by his parents to be safe, he became almost oblivious of conversation which he despised. He did not reflect that Susannah knew nothing of his hidden conflict, that she could only perceive that, after uttering an ominous warning, he had left her to work out its application alone.
It was at first not at all her liking for the Smiths, but only her unbiassed common sense, which convinced her that the wild stories told concerning them were untrue. When she became enraged at their untruth she became more kindly disposed toward the young mother, whose baby had made a strong appeal to her girlish heart, and the big kindly lout of a man who had sheltered her from the rain. This benevolent disposition might have slumbered unfruitful but for the memory of the fine and resolute face of the young disciple who had promised to wrestle in prayer for her. There was novelty in the thought. The gay witch Novelty often apes the form of Love. Susannah did not know Love, so she did not recognise even the vestments falsely worn, but they attracted her all the same. Her young blood boiled when her aunt, dimly discerning some unlooked-for obstinacy in her niece's mind, repeated each new report in disfavour of the Mormons. It was the old story about the blood of the martyrs, for ridicule and slander spill the pregnant blood of the soul; but they who believe themselves to be of the Church can seldom believe that any blood but their own will bear fruit. Every stab given to the reputation of the Smiths was an appeal to Susannah's sympathy for them. Mrs. Croom, with a sense of solemn responsibility, was at great cost bringing all her influence to bear upon the young girl whom her son loved. She drearily said to herself, after many days, that her influence was weak, that it accomplished nothing. The strength of it pushed Susannah, who stood faltering at the parting of the ways, and the impetus of that push was felt in her rapid and unsteady step for many and many a year.
One day, when the men were out cutting the maize, Susannah rode with her uncle to the most distant of his fields, and found herself on the hill called in Smith's revelation Cumorah.
The sound of the men at work and the horses shaking their harness was close in her ears while she strayed over this bit of hilly woodland. It is one of the low ridges that intersect the meadows on the banks of the Canandaigua, and here Smith professed to have found the golden book. It was because of this that Susannah had the curiosity to climb it now.
The beech wood grew thick upon it; the afternoon sun struck its slant sunbeams across their boles. Once, where the beeches parted, she came upon a fairy glade where two or three maples, fading early, had carpeted the ground with a mosaic of gold and red, and were holding up the remainder of their foliage, pink and yellow, in the light. The beauty wrought in her a dreamy receptive mood. Climbing higher, she came upon a very curious dip or hollow in the ground. In its narrowest part a man was lying prostrate; his face was buried in his hat, which was lying upon the ground between his hands; the whole expression of his body was that of attention concentrated upon something within the hat. When she came close he moved with a convulsive start, and she saw that it was Joseph Smith.
His look changed into one of deference and satisfaction. He rose up, lifting his hat carefully; in it lay a curious stone composed of bright crystals, in shape not unlike a child's foot.
"It's my peepstone," he said. "It's the stone I look into when I pray that I may be shown what to do." Exactly as one child might show to another some worthless object he deemed choice, he showed the stone to her.
"I don't know what you mean. How could a stone help you?"
"All I know is that when I've been lying for a long time, feeling that I'm a poor fellow and haven't got no sense anyway, and the tears come to my eyes and gush out, feeling I'm so poor and mean, then when I lie and look and look into this peepstone, I see things in it, pictures of things that is to be, and sometimes of things that are just happening alongside of me that I didn't know any other way. I can't say how it may be; I only know when I see it that I am 'accounted worthy.'"
"You couldn't see anything in the stone."
"No more I couldn't. The stone's nothing, an' I'm nothing, and that's why, when I do see the pictures, I know it must be either God or the devil that sends them; and it's not the devil, for I always work myself up to a mighty lot of praying first, and why should the pictures come after that if it was the devil?"
"What do you see?"
"I'll tell you one thing I have seen. Mebbe you'll know what it means; mebbe you won't. I don't know myself rightly yet. I've often to study on those things a long while before I know what they mean, but lately I've seen you."
"Me?"
"Yes, you, miss. The things I see are like small tiny pictures inside the stone. Your bonnet was off. You were inside a room. There was tables and chairs, and there was a man there. He wasn't very old; he had light hair."
"What had he to do with me?" she asked, astonished.
"I just saw you stand there, and him a-sitting, but a voice in my own heart seemed to say—"
"What?"
"It was one of my revelations. If I tell you, you won't believe it. Howsomever, I think it's my duty to tell you, although you may tell your folks, and they may persecute me." He paused here, and when he began again it was in a different tone of voice and with a singing cadence. "The voice said, 'I say unto thee, she shall see the white stone, and shall be told the thing that she shall do for the salvation of her soul; and I say unto thee, Joseph Smith junior, that thou shalt say unto her to look upon the stone, for she is chosen to go through suffering and grief for a little space, and after that to have great riches and honour, and in the world to come life everlasting.'"
As he spoke he was holding up the stone, which glistened in the sunlight, before her eyes.
Susannah stared at it to prove to herself that there was nothing remarkable about it. The feeling of opposition seemed to die of itself, and then she had a curious sensation of arousing herself with a start from a fixed posture and momentary oblivion. That afternoon as she was going home, and in the following days, phrases and sentences from the prophecy which Joseph Smith had pronounced in regard to her clung to her mind. In disdain she tried to tell herself that the man was mad; in childlike wonder she considered what might be the mystery of the vision within the stone and the prophecy if he were not mad. She had never heard of crystal-gazing; the phrase "mental automatism" had not then been invented by the psychologists; still less could she suspect that she herself might have come partially under the influence of hypnotic suggestion. The large kindliness of the new prophet, the steady sobriety and childlikeness of his demeanour, the absence of any appearance of policy or premeditation, were not in harmony with fraud or madness. Her gentle intelligence was puzzled, as all the candid historians of this man have since been puzzled. Then, tired of the puzzle, she fell again to contemplating scraps of his speech, which, having a Scriptural sound, suggested piety. "She shall be told the thing that she shall do for the salvation of her soul," "She is chosen to go through suffering and grief for a little space." How strange if, impossible as it might seem, these words had come to her—to her—direct from the mind of the Almighty!
Some days after this Susannah sat alone at the window of the family room, the long white seam on which she was at work enveloping her knees.
Far off on the horizon the cumulous clouds lay with level under-ridges, their upper outlines softly heaped in pearly lights and shades of dun and gray. Beneath them the hilly line of the forest was broken distinctly against the cloud by the spikes of giant pines. That far outline was blue, not the turquoise blue of the sky above the clouds, but the blue that we see on cabbage leaves, or such blue as the moonlight makes when it falls through a frosted pane—steel blue, so full of light as to be luminous in itself. From this the nearer contour of the forest emerged, painted in green, with patches and streaks of russet; the nearer groves were beginning to change colour, and, vivid in the sunlight, the fields were yellow. From the top of a low hill which met the sky came the white road winding over rise and hollow till it passed the door. Who has not felt the invitation, silent, persistent, of a road that leads through a lonely land to the unseen beyond the hill?
Susannah was again alone in the house; this time Ephraim was absent with his mother, and her uncle was at the mill. On the white road she saw a man approaching whose dress showed him to be Smith's Quaker convert, Angel Halsey, a name she had conned till it had become familiar. He did not pass, but opened the gate of the small garden path and came up between the two borders of sweet-smelling box. In the garden China asters, zenias, and prince's feather, dahlias, marigolds, and love-lies-bleeding were falling over one another in luxuriant waste. The young man neither looked to night nor to left. He scanned the house eagerly, and his eyes found the window at which Susannah sat. He stepped across the flowers and stood, his blonde face upturned, below the open sash. Under his light eyebrows his hazel eyes shone with a singularly bright and exalted expression.
"Come, friend Susannah," said he, "I have been sent to bring you to witness my baptism," and with that he turned and walked slowly down the path, as if waiting for her to follow.
Susannah, filled with surprise, watched him as he made slowly for the gate, as if assured that she would come. When he got to it he set it open, and, holding it, looked back.
She dropped the long folds of muslin, and they fell upon the floor knee-deep about her; she stepped out of them and walked across the old familiar living-room, with its long strips of worn rag-carpet, its old polished chairs, and smoky walls. The face of the eight-day clock stared hard at her with impassive yet kindly glance, but its voice only steadily recorded that the moments were passing one by one, like to all other moments.
Susannah went out of the door. The sun drew forth aromatic scent from the borders of box, and her light skirt brushed the blossoms that leaned too far over. Outside the wicket gate at which the young man stood was a young quince tree laden with pale-green fruit. Susannah let her eyes rest upon it as she spoke: she even let her mind wander for a second to think how soon the fruit would be gathered.
"Why should I come to see your baptism?" she asked, with her voice on the upward cadence.
The young man blushed deeply. "I am come to thee with a message from heaven." He glanced upward to the great sky that was the colour of turquoise, cloudless, serene.
"It is a strange errand." There was a touch of reproof in her voice, and yet also the vibration of awe-struck inquiry. Her mind rushed at once to the memory of Joseph Smith's prophecy.
"Come, friend," said the young Quaker very gently.
"I can't possibly go."
His strange reply was, "With God all things are possible."
The text fell upon her mind with force.
"Come," he said gently, and he motioned that he would shut the gate behind her.
"Not now; my shoes are not stout; I have no bonnet or shawl."
"Put thy kerchief over thy head and come, friend Susannah, for 'no man, putting his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of heaven.'"
At this he walked on, and she was forced to follow for a few steps to ask an explanation. She tied her kerchief over her head and the thick white dust covered her slender shoes.
"What do you want me to come for?" she asked.
He looked upon her, colouring again with the effort to express what was to him sacred. "It has been given to me to pray for thy soul. To-day, as I prayed, it was borne in upon me that thou shouldst be with me in the waters of baptism."
Susannah paused on the road, planting the heels of her shoes deeply in the dust. "I will not," she cried. "I will never believe in Joseph Smith."
"And yet it has been revealed, friend, that thou art one of the elect. The time will come very soon when thou wilt believe to the salvation of thy soul."
He walked slowly onward, and after a minute Susannah, with quickened steps, followed him, in high anger now. "I do not believe in the revelations of Joseph Smith," she cried. And because he did not appear offended she spoke more rudely, catching at phrases to which she had become accustomed. "If the salvation of my soul should depend upon it, I would rather lose it than believe."
But when she had said these last words a little gasp came in her breath, and her heart quailed in realising the possibility of which she had spoken. Her own angry words had diverted her attention from questioning the reasonableness of the new faith to the fearful contemplation of what might be the result of rejection.
If she quailed at her own speech, the grief of the young Quaker was more obvious. He put up his hands as if in fear that she should add to her sin by repeating her words. Quiet as was his demeanour, the emotional side of his nature had evidently been deeply wrought upon to-day, for when he tried to speak to reprove her, grief choked his utterance. It was not at that time a strange thing for men under the influence of religious convictions to weep easily. On the contrary, it was accounted by evangelists a sign of great grace; but Susannah, accustomed only to the reserve of English gentlemen and her uncle's stern Puritan self-repression, seeing this young Quaker weep for her sake, was greatly touched. She became possessed by an excited desire to console him.
The young man turned, weeping as he went, into a little wood that here bordered the road. Susannah followed, full of ruth, thinking that he merely sought temporary shade.
They had proceeded under the trees a few paces when Emma Smith came up from the bank of the river to meet them. Halsey controlled himself and spoke to Emma.
"She has refused. For this time she has rejected the truth."
Now to Susannah the matter for amazement was that she had come so far from home (although, it was not very far), that she had actually arrived, as it seemed, at an appointed place. The sting that this gave to her pride was greatly eased by perceiving that she had not by this fulfilled his hopes.
Emma Smith had a pale, patient face, which was at this time made peculiarly dignified by a look of solemn excitement. Young as she was, she turned to Susannah with a protecting motherly air.
"Perhaps next time the opportunity is offered the young lady will embrace it and save her soul." She spoke consolingly to Halsey, but looked at Susannah with encouraging and respectful eyes. "You will see this young man baptized?" she asked.
Under the protection of Emma Smith, Susannah stooped under the willow boughs and found herself upon the bank of the river in the presence of Joseph Smith, his mother, and some half-dozen men.
Lucy Smith was muttering somewhat concerning a vision of angels, and the suppressed excitement of them all was manifest. Susannah was infected by it; she was now tremulous and eager to see what was to be seen.
Joseph Smith advanced into the flowing river and stood in a pool where the water was well up to his thighs. Standing thus, he began to speak in the same formal tone and with the same solemn expression that Susannah had marked when he spoke the revelation concerning herself, but more loudly. "Behold! we have gathered together according to the revelation which has been given to me—"
Here a dark young man called Oliver Cowdery groaned and said "Amen." A tremble of excitement went through the group upon the shore.
Loudly the prophet went on—"Knowing well that there is nothing in me, who was wicked and graceless to a very high degree, and wanting in knowledge, but was yet chosen, upon this sinful earth and in these last days, when wickedness and hypocrisy is abounding, to open to all who would be saved a new church which is such as that which the angel hath revealed to me a church should be, and all them which shall receive my word and shall be baptized of me or of Mr. Oliver Cowdery, whom the angel Maroni, descending in a cloud of light, has ordained with me to the priesthood of Aaron, which holds the keys of the ministering of angels and of the gospel of repentance and of baptism by immersion for the remission of sins. And this shall never again be taken from the earth until the sons of Levi do offer again an offering unto the Lord in the new Jerusalem."
The loud voice carried with it an impression of strong personal feeling; the effect on the bystanders was such as the words alone were wholly inadequate to produce. Cowdery, who during the speech had frequently groaned and responded, after the Methodist fashion, now shouted and clapped his hands towards the heavens, whereupon Lucy Smith fell into a convulsive state between laughter and tears, and the men standing beside her dropped upon their knees. Emma Smith remained standing; upon her face was a rapt triumphant expression. She put her arm round Susannah protectingly, and Susannah did not repulse the familiar action.
Joseph Smith now in the same voice called upon his father to be baptized. He addressed him formally as "Joseph Smith senior." The old man had, as it seemed, a great fear of the water. It took both priests of the new sect together to lift and immerse him. There was more splashing than was seemly. The baptism of a farmer named Martin Harris, which followed, was more decorous.
The sunlight lay bright on the other side of the flowing river, and the shadow of the willow tops above them was outlined on the stream. On the sunny bank opposite there was a thicket of sumac trees reddening to the autumn heat; the wild vine was climbing upon them, making their foliage the more dense, and at their roots, by the edge of the stream, the golden rod was massed. On the bank on which they stood the colouring was more quiet. A few ragged spikes of the purple aster were all that grew under the gray green willows, which with every breath turned the silver underside of their soft foliage to the wind. The place for the baptism had no doubt been chosen because of the depth of the water, and because the bank here was comparatively bare.
It was about four o'clock in the afternoon. The steady sound of the mattock in a neighbouring field was the only token of the common bustling world that lay close around the curious isolation of the hour.
It was time that Angel Halsey should be baptized. In his Quaker clothes he waded into the water. His manner now was entirely serene, his face full of joy.
A thought was struck wedge-like into Susannah's understanding. If Halsey, who was so manifestly on a higher plane of education and refinement than these others, could so triumphantly embrace the new faith, it must surely contain more of virtue and reason than she could see. The influence of what he was, being so much greater than the influence of what he had said, caused her mind to work with solemn earnestness as she followed him in sympathy through the symbol of death and resurrection.
When the prophet came back to the shore he appeared for the first time to recognise Susannah, and stopped before her, but at first with a distraught manner, as if he were trying to recollect some dream that eluded him. He still had his hand familiarly on Halsey's arm, for he had been conducting him out of the water.
"This is the elect sister?" Smith asked in a hesitating tone, as if still striving with memory. "Does she desire baptism?"
"Not yet," answered Halsey, "but I have asked the Lord for her soul, and I believe that it has been given."
In Halsey's mind up to this moment there was, no doubt, only the solicitude of the missionary spirit; but Smith was a man whose mind was cast in a different mould; he had already marked the solicitude and given it his own interpretation, and he had already opened his own eyes upon her beauty. How far this had conscious connection with the condition of actual trance into which he now fell cannot be known. It is probable that what the Psalmist calls the "secret parts" are not in such minds as Smith's open to the man's own eye.
Smith became wrapped in a sudden ecstasy. Oblivious of all around him, he looked up into the heavens, and it was apparent that his eyes were not beholding the material objects around. Those about him gazed awe-struck, waiting and listening, for he began to speak in a low unknown tongue, as if holding converse with some one above.
Susannah shrank back, but was held by Emma's encouraging arm. Halsey stayed perforce, for the prophet's grasp had tightened convulsively upon him.
In a few moments the vision was over, and Joseph Smith opened his eyes and smiled in his own slow kindly way upon the frightened girl and upon Angel Halsey, who stood with steadfast mien.
"It has been revealed to me in heaven that the soul of the elect sister is indeed given to be united to the soul of this young disciple, that thereby she may obtain salvation."
He took Susannah's hand, and she felt no power to resist him; he clasped Halsey's almost more timid and reluctant hand over it.
"Wherefore in the sight of God and in the sight of these elect saints now present I declare that these two are joined together in the mystical union of a most holy marriage which God himself has revealed from heaven."
For some moments Susannah gazed fascinated; then she snatched away her hand; dignity sought to maintain itself; pride rose up in anger. Her growing awe of the prophet numbed to a certain extent both these sentiments, but stronger than pride and self-respect and awe was some tender shame within her heart which was hurt beyond enduring, so that she put her hands before her face and wept, and walked away from them weeping, followed by Emma, who began, as they walked, to weep in sympathy.
Tears bring relief to the brain, a relief it is hard to distinguish from comfort of soul. When Susannah could check her unaccustomed sobs, when she found herself walking quietly homeward with only the weeping Emma by her side, the spirit of long suffering and patience stole upon her unawares.
"Why do you cry?" she asked gently.
"I think it must be so hard for you," said Emma; "it's been very hard for me, although I love Joseph with all my heart; but you are so childish and so good-looking, it seems someways as if it came harder on you; and then that Mr. Halsey hasn't got the warmth of heart that Joseph has."
To this astonishing reply Susannah found no answer. Emma was too respectable, too honest in her sympathy, to be derided, but Susannah's understanding could ill endure the thought that the incident of the hour was important. As the outcome of honest delusion, she might forgive it; something in the pathos of Halsey's strained face as she remembered his look when she turned away weeping, urged her to forgiveness.
"Mr. Halsey is nothing to me," said Susannah at last; she spoke with a falter in her voice, for Emma's unfeigned grief touched her.
"Oh! don't say that. Some judgment might come on you that would be worse than any suffering that would come from obedience to the word of the Lord; and besides, it's the will of God, you see; and of course He'll see that it's done, so you'd be punished for rebellion, and you'd have to obey all the same."
Susannah was beginning to be infected by this steady assumption that God had indeed spoken. Could it be possible?
How much better humanity might have been had we been at the world's making we cannot tell, but as it is, the Creator knows that a woman whose veins are pulsing with youth does not know, as she stands between her lovers, how far influences not born of reason are affecting her understanding. Ephraim remained neglectful, and Susannah remembered with more and more distinct compassion Halsey's wistful face and the touch of his trembling hand. But the emotion which is deeper than human love was also in ferment. The shock which she had received, aided by the pressure at home, had effectually worked religious unrest. She was certain now that she must do some new thing to obtain peace with God. Long monotonous days ripened within her this altered mind.
On one of the warm days that fell at the end of the apple harvest, when such vagrant labourers as had collected to help the farmers were loitering at liberty, Smith held his first and last public meeting in the place where his boyhood had been passed. It was near the cross-roads on the old highroad to Palmyra, where a small wooden bridge carries over a creek that runs through the meadow to the Canandaigua. Here in the leisure time of the afternoon Smith lifted up his voice and preached to an ever-increasing crowd, composed first of men, and added to by whole families from most of those houses within touch of the village.
The elder Croom, his wife, and Susannah were returning from the weekly shopping at Palmyra's store; they came upon the crowd, and stopped perforce. Wrath was upon the faces of the elder couple, and nothing less than terror upon Susannah's white cheeks.
Susannah would have run far to have been saved the awful interrogation of opportunity. Perhaps all that she knew just then, in her childlike bewilderment, was that the slanders of the persecution were wrong, and her untrained mind jumped to the conclusion that the God of truth must therefore be with Smith. Beyond this there was unnamed wonder at the unexplained influence that Smith held over her, and more curious thoughts, stretching out like the delicate tendrils of an unsupported vine, concerning Halsey, his prayers and warnings, and the strength of selfless devotion that she had read in his innocent eyes.
Old Croom, deacon and magistrate, was not one to tarry at such a gathering longer than need be. When he perceived that some of the planks of the bridge had been taken to support the dam he alighted and broke down a log fence in order to drive his horses through meadow and stream to join the road nearer home. His women must needs walk over the scanty beams. Mrs. Croom, stately and well attired, could make her way through the crowd; no one there was so rapt but that he let her pass when, with eyes flashing in righteous indignation, she tapped him on the shoulder and bid him stand aside. Susannah followed in her aunt's wake, the crowd of neighbours and strange labourers closing behind them again as they worked their way, of necessity slowly, nearer and nearer the preacher and the little band of adherents that stood steadfast around him.
Susannah heard the words of the sermon in which open confession of his own past sin, bold persuasions to Christianity and righteousness, were strangely mingled with the claim of the new prophet. She could not remember one moment what he had said the last. Low hisses and muttered threats of the angry men about her fell on her ears in the same way, making their own impression, but not on reason or memory. A sickening dread of a call that would come before she got away was all that she fully realised. It came when, in her white gala dress, she stood still at last near to, and under the eye of, the preacher.
The sermon was finished. There was a silence at its end so unexpected that none in the crowd broke it. It seemed for those moments to reach not only into the hearts of the crowd, but into the wide, empty vault of sunny blue above them, and over the open fields and golden woods. Then, before the wrath of the crowd had gathered strength to break into violence, Smith went down into the water and called loudly to all such as felt the need of saving their souls to enter upon the heavenly pilgrimage by the gate of his baptism. His adherents had cast themselves upon their knees in prayer. Susannah saw the strong, dark face of Oliver Cowdery looking up to the sky as though he saw the heavens opened, and she saw Angel Halsey look at herself, and then, clasping his hands over his fair young face, bow himself in supplication.
A man, ragged in dress, and bearing the look of ill deeds in his face, made his way out of the crowd into the water. He was a stranger to the place, and the spectators looked on in silent surprise. Before Smith had dipped him in the stream and blessed him another man came forward, pale and thin, with a hectic flush upon his cheeks. He was a well-known resident of Manchester; all knew that his days on earth must be few. A low howl began to rise, loudest on the outskirts of the crowd, but the fact that the man was dying kept many silent, feeling that the doomed may surely have their own will.
Before Joseph Smith had spoken his benediction over this trembling, gasping creature, when Halsey had left his kneeling to spring forward and lead him to the shore, Susannah began to move forward to the water. No one who saw her move at first dreamed of what she sought. Her aunt had pushed on some distance farther and stood waiting, almost too astonished at this last baptism to notice that she was separated from her charge. Now, when she saw Susannah pushing forward, she only wondered with others what she would be at, and spoke to her ineffectually, without the shriek and struggle which she made when the girl was beyond her reach.
So Susannah, moving like one in an agonised dream, came to the edge of the pool. Among the praying band there was no doubt as to her intention, no astonishment; the kneeling men gave instant thanks to God for her decision, and Halsey, having helped the feeble man to land, led Susannah down into the water, his face illuminated by the victory of faith.
Susannah heard now her aunt's wild shrieks; she heard too the surging of the crowd, but the meaning of neither sound came to her. She waded on to where Smith stood, with only the dazed sense of a goal to be reached. She was perfectly passive in his hands as he dipped her beneath the surface and raised her up, but she listened to the blessing he pronounced with a sudden leap of the heart, feeling that now at last the misery of fear was past and the demand of God satisfied—it must be so because it had cost so much.
When she came to herself she saw that the crowd, like a wild beast, had sprung downward upon the disciples. Even in her first terrified glance she was impressed by the strange and awful difference between the distorted and hideous faces of the mob and the exalted calm of the few men who had at this time fixed their minds on the unseen rather than the seen. She looked up to Smith in the swift appeal of terror, and felt once for all the huge courage by which his life was marked. His hand, helping her to the shore, never trembled. He calmly directed her steps into the quiet meadow before he gave himself to the battle.
When her person was no longer there to be protected, the Mormons gave way at once before the gathering strength of the mob. She saw them beaten down mercilessly; she saw Smith himself beaten and thrown prostrate in the water. The still, warm air that a few minutes before had seemed instinct with prayer was now vibrating to the howls and taunts and curses of the mob. Susannah had no doubt that these, who were now her friends, were being killed; their sufferings justified her to herself and produced a fierce exaltation in the step which she had taken. In her experience of life she thought that the mob would turn upon her next, and stood waiting, every muscle tense, her hands clenched, feeling excitedly that she would rather die than live to see such intolerable wrong.
This tension of nerve relaxed somewhat when her uncle lifted her forcibly into the waggon. With eyes wide open with horror and lips trembling, she asked, "Did they kill them, uncle?"
"No, child, they only gave them a good trouncing in their own pond." He choked here, out of pity for her, keeping back the torrent of his anger.
Even at this early date it was bruited that Joseph Smith exercised some unseemly force of will by which he distorted the reason of his converts. This report explained the fact that for the first day after the shock of Susannah's baptism her aunt and uncle did not lay the blame of it at her door, did not argue or persuade, only watched her as one recovering from a strange disease. But in the afternoon of that first day the pent-up fever of the aunt's wrath against those whom she thought to blame broke forth, and almost in delirium.
The last hot weather of the autumn still held; in the same still hour of the afternoon, the hour in which Susannah's baptism had taken place the day before, Angel Halsey, pallid with his yesterday's beating and ill-usage, but steadfast and even joyful of face, walked up to the front door of the magistrate's house.
This door opened upon an unfrequented entrance-hall. Susannah heard the knock, heard her aunt move with the dignity befitting an expected visitor. Then she heard Ephraim's step on the stair for the first time that day, and reflected dully that he must have seen the advent of some important person from his window to be thus answering the call of the door.
After that she heard words that had the sound of suppressed screams in them. She realised that the house mistress was ordering some enemy from her door. These commands were not obeyed, and Susannah, hearing that the intruder remained, began in fear to suspect the meaning of the intrusion. As she rose the report of a fire-arm startled her from all the remnants of her selfish dulness, causing her feet to fly.
From within the sitting-room she saw the entrance-hall. Its door was open to the wide sweep of land that lay in floods of sunshine. In the light, half turning now to go as he had come, stood Angel Halsey. Her eager eyes drank in the sight of him, because last night she had thought to see him die. She saw his quietness even while, it seemed to her, the gun still echoed, and it was Ephraim who held the gun! Beside Ephraim her aunt stood, like one in a frenzy, her very garments twitching and her gray hair fallen loose. None of them looked to see the girl within the shaded room.
"Friends," said Halsey, "I came to say 'Peace be with this house,' and to speak with her to whom God has given the spirit of obedience to his truth, but it is written that when any house refuses to receive us we must depart."
His voice was for some cause growing fainter, but Susannah was certain that the cause was not fear.
He took a letter from his breast. "I wrote it," he said, "in case I might not enter to speak with her."
He gave the letter to Ephraim, who took it reluctantly, as one impelled by some strong sense of right.
Halsey went out. He tottered upon the path, but he opened the gate and walked on. Ephraim, still holding the gun and the letter, turned and saw Susannah.
Ephraim's face was gaunt and haggard as she had never seen it before; his eyes were large, and she thought she read unutterable distress in them, but could not understand. She held out her hand for the letter, but as he gave it both she and he perceived for the first time that it was stained with blood; they felt mutually the thrill that the sight gave.
He put his hand out suddenly and pushed her within the room. "Go," he entreated, "for God's sake, Susy, go to your own room; take his letter with you if you will, but go."
Susannah went amazed, but she began to think that Ephraim's distress had not been a gracious sorrow, but remorse for his own crime. He must have shot Halsey as he would have shot at some evil beast. When she had time to remember that Halsey had tottered when he walked, she fled back, straining the blood-stained letter to her breast, and tore open the closed door. Her aunt was sitting in a low chair sobbing. Ephraim, bareheaded in the sunshine, was standing on the path shading his eyes to scan the road. Susannah ran out, not to him (her shame and grief for him were too deep for any word), but with intent to run after the wounded man and nurse his wound.
"It can be but a slight flesh wound," said Ephraim mechanically.
She looked first where he was gazing, and saw that some distance down the road Halsey was stepping into a chaise. Another man took the seat beside him and they drove away.
Then she looked at Ephraim. He did not appear as though he felt his guilt; he had the mien rather of one who was striving bravely to endure hardship. Then indeed she felt that the gulf of thought must yawn wide between them; she could even yet have pitied Ephraim's contrition, but he was not contrite. In indignation she retired, sitting in the privacy of her little bedroom.
It was a strange letter, not alone because the ink was blurred by blood that, still warm, soaked it through in parts, but because, coming from a young man to a maid, in the first flush of her strength and beauty, it offered love and marriage, giving only as his reason, urging only as her motive, the service of God.
"If," the letter read, "thou canst see thy way, dear friend, to hold fast that thou hast in the house of thy friends, if thou canst see thy way, by steadfast confession and by the grace of thy demeanour, to strive among them for their conversion, it would be well while thou art still so young to remain with them for a time—at least so I think. But our prophet thinks, and I also greatly desire to think, that the strain upon thy faith would be too great, that thou mightst fail; and remembering that it has been revealed to him that our union has been sealed in heaven, he thinks that thou wouldst do well to commit thy tender life now to my keeping."
The phrase "and I greatly desire to think" was almost as strong as any in a long letter to tell which way his delight would lie, and Susannah's was not a mind upon which this indication of reserve force was thrown away. She trusted, vaguely in thought but implicitly in heart, to that which lay behind—something which did not alarm her, which in her inner vision wore no warm nor obtrusive colouring, but which she knew to be intense and of enduring quality. And she saw herself alone, beaten by adverse winds and without other shelter.
Halsey touched upon the fact that Smith and his disciples (he did not say himself) had suffered greatly from yesterday's ill-usage, and said that, having given their message to the people, they were that day leaving for a place called Fayette, in Seneca county, where it had previously been determined that the new church should be organised. He himself would wait either until Susannah saw her way to come with him, or until he knew that she was at peace, having chosen of her own accord to remain. He would bring a chaise, in which she could travel if she would, near her uncle's house at dawn upon the next morning. He would take her, he said, to the house where the Smiths were in Fayette, but it was implied through all the letter that the mystic marriage which Smith had solemnised was considered by Halsey as valid, and that if she joined her material fortunes now to those of the persecuted sect, it would be as his wife.
In speaking of the future he did not gloss over the persecution; he did not even promise, as Smith had done, a sure and material reward. The mind of the young Quaker convert was fixed upon the things that are unseen. This was not hidden from the girl. The thought of being with him in his faith and resignation gave her peace. Poverty and persecution seemed as nothing compared with the torture of being surrounded by people whose thought and actions aroused in her young heart whirlwinds of passionate opposition. Even Ephraim, instead of rising in his strength to condemn the outrage of yesterday, had attempted to-day to wound or kill. Her amazement and dismay at this drove her out as it were with a scourge.
Halsey had told her to pray, and she had tried to pray. Halsey had told her to search the Scriptures for guidance, and she read. Text after text came home to her heart, bidding her leave her kindred to share the fortunes of the persecuted children of faith.
At break of day Halsey was waiting upon the road with a fairly good horse and a comfortable chaise. Susannah never forgot the light that came to his eyes when he saw her approach; it was like dawn in paradise.
Angel Halsey was not without shrewd worldly wisdom. He turned into a cross corduroy road that led through the woods, passing only some small clearings to the west of Palmyra, and thus by a detour avoiding that village, he returned again to the highroad between Canandaigua and Geneva. The pursuers, upon failing to hear that the chaise had passed through Palmyra, might turn back, or if they had gone on they might have outstripped them on the road, and be in front rather than behind. This danger peopled the long lonely road with possible enemies both before and behind. The strain upon the imagination was very great. The road was heavy and rough.
Susannah perceived that Halsey's apprehension of being overtaken was almost solely on her account. He was so upborne by his religious enthusiasm as to be oblivious to the pain which his wound of yesterday gave him, and was perfectly willing to encounter the violence of her kindred again if need be, yet, seeing her terror with a quickness of sympathy which roused her gratitude, he took every possible precaution that could allay her fears. All through the weary, weary day she hardly spoke to him, never addressed him by name.
They reached the new town of Geneva at sundown. When they had set forth again, it was a great comfort to Susannah that grayness had succeeded to sunshine. She was weary of the yellow light, of the dull glare from the stubble fields, of the obtrusive colours of the autumn foliage, of the blueness of the sky, of everything, indeed, that she had seen and heard during the wretched hours of the day. They now travelled through a very flat tract; little of the land was cleared; the road was straight. It is hard to explain the mental weariness produced by a straight level road. The hope and interest inspired by undulations or curves are lost. The distance ever gives a farther reach of the weary way to the view, as if by a parable it would impress on the traveller the knowledge that the future was to be barren of delight.
About two miles from Geneva, before the daylight was quite gone, they were both startled by hearing a rushing, crashing sound coming toward them in the woods. Were their pursuers upon them after all? Had they chosen this, the most lonely part of their road, to fall upon them?
They did not speak their thoughts to one another. Angel struck the horse, and it galloped forward perhaps about a hundred yards, and then, of its own accord, stopped suddenly.
Upon the side of the road, pushing itself backward among the bushes, the better to gain space for its run, was a bull. Its eyes were bloodshot, its head lowered for a long moment to measure its distance ere it made the attack. The horse seemed palsied with terror. It moved backward with tottering steps, trembling all over, heedless of whip or rein.
The backward movement prolonged the hesitation of the bull, which turned itself to take another aim. The horse uttered an almost human cry. In the moment of hearing that cry Susannah felt that she had already gone through some shocking form of death. Halsey brought down his whip, striking the horse with all his might; it leaped forward, lifting the chaise almost into the air; then it was rushing madly on, dragging the wheels behind it with terrible velocity.
They had caught sight of the rush of the bull. They felt the animal's heavy side just graze the back of the chaise, and they heard behind them a bellow of rage that seemed to fill all the solitary place with diabolical echoes.
The body of the chaise was bounding upon its leather bands, jolting cruelly against the axle. Susannah cried out that she should be thrown from her seat. The swift-falling darkness encompassed their path. Their hope lay in the straightness of the road, and their chief fear was that by some greater roughness of the way the chaise, which was now swaying fearfully, might be overturned.
Gradually the sound of the bull's galloping became less distinct. The chaise was still upright. The horse, beginning to falter in his pace, took more kindly to the accustomed control of the rein. It was then Susannah found that she had been clinging to Halsey for support, and that he, by bracing himself with one arm to the side of the chaise and holding her with the other, had prevented her from being thrown out.
In gathering her shawl about her she wrapped herself again in a certain amount of her former reserve, but the excitement that she had been through made her former silence impossible.
Halsey at first received her remarks in silence, then as he essayed to answer, his voice grew low and faint, and a sudden suspicion of the cause pierced through her mind.
In another moment he sank, leaning against her. Putting her hand beneath his coat, she found to her dismay that the strain of holding her had opened his wound; his clothes were again wet with blood.
The reins slipped from his hands. Susannah tied them loose to the front of the chaise and, putting her arms round the fainting man, drew the bandages tightly but with unskilful hands; she lessened the bleeding and caused him such acute pain that he lifted his head and spoke.
"What shall I do?" she asked piteously. The blood, diverted from the brain, had left it without healthy circulation, but she did not know yet that this was affecting his mind.
"Friend," he whispered, "that was in truth no bull; it was the devil himself."
"The devil?" she asked faintly.
"He almost succeeded in his cruel attempt to cause us to be discouraged from the way."
"It seems to me he only succeeded in causing us to take the way with greater vehemence," she replied in some scorn.
In the next minute she heard him whisper eagerly, "Look up; look between the branches; quick! Do you not see the face looking at us?"
The branches of the overhanging tree were black with night. She looked up in the direction that his feeble hand indicated, and with indescribable terror scanned the blank spaces in which no human face could possibly be.
"Look!" he whispered again impatiently. "Don't you see it? It is the face of a man. A white face! It is the face of thy cousin as I saw it yesterday when I was counted worthy to suffer. Look! look! does thou not see him?"
His words had the effect of producing in her that maddening fear of the dark which ghostly tales induce, and now he fainted again. She was afraid to cry for help, afraid even of the rustle of her own garments. She did not know how far she was from any house. And it seemed to her that this lover, who was almost a stranger, was dying in her arms. The misery of this hour governed her action in the next.
Halsey in the bottom of the chaise lay with his head against her knee, and soon, holding the bandages of his wound close upon it with one hand, she took the reins with the other and urged the horse forward. She had had no thought all that day but to go, as Halsey had said, to Emma Smith's protection. She hoped now that there was but one road; that when she came to the first settlement she would be with the Smiths. This was not the case. She travelled an hour, obliged to pass more than one cross-road because she dared not turn down it. At length she found herself in front of a large house with lighted windows, which was evidently an inn.
The door opened, letting out a stream of candlelight. A man stood in the doorway. "What place is this?" cried Susannah's voice from the darkness.
"It's John Biery's hotel."
"Will you have the kindness to tell me if you know of any one called Mr. Joseph Smith?"
There was some talking within. "No, we never heard of Mr. Joseph Smith."
"Or Mr. Oliver Cowdery?" Again there was talking.
"No, it don't seem that we've any of us heard o' those names before. Be you alone?" The deep bass voice of John Biery was becoming more insistent in its rising inflection.
For some half-minute Susannah did not answer, and then fear of being compelled to retake the road made irresolution impossible.
"Indeed, sir, I am not alone. I have in the chaise with me a sick man, and I fear that he may be dying. I thought to find friends, but it seems in the darkness I have missed my way. I must beg of you to assist me to lift him into the house and give us shelter for the night."
The men had remained perfectly still, drinking in her every syllable with that fierce thirst for news which is a first passion of dwellers in such desolate places; then, aroused by what they heard, they came forward across a rough bit of ground to the road. The burly form of John Biery came first, and he called for a lantern, which was instantly produced by one of those who followed. They held it up over Angel's crouching form and death-like face. Then they held it higher and stared at Susannah. Her shawl had fallen from off her shoulders. The handkerchief upon her neck was loose, and underneath the pink border of her bonnet the ringlets had begun to stray. Her resolute face, so young and beautiful, startled them almost as an apparition might have done.
"I'm dead beat," said the hotel-keeper under his breath, "if I ever seed anything like that!" But with the ready suspicion of a prudent householder he questioned her. Where had the man come by the wound? For they saw the blood-stained bandages she clasped.
Yesterday, she explained, he had received a slight bullet-wound by accident, and to-day, in their long travel, the loss of blood had disabled him.
"Does he belong to you, young lady?"
Susannah busied herself with the bandages for a moment, but terror had carried her far. She replied with gentle decision, "He is my husband."
"It is our fault."
That evening Ephraim Croom stood in his father's sitting-room, near the door of the dark stair that led up to his own rooms. His shoulders were drooping. His face was gray and haggard. Even his hair and beard, damp, unkempt, seemed to express remorse in their outline. He stood doggedly facing his father and mother, repeating the thing that he saw to be true, but with no further words to interpret his insight.
To his parents his opinions, his attitude, appeared as an outrage upon reason. His father looked at him with greater severity than he had ever before exercised upon his only child. "I reckon, Ephraim, that you speak without using the sense that the Almighty has been mercifully pleased to give you. You know, Ephraim, the girl has been as a daughter in this house. When has it been said to her that her father, dying in his worldly follies, left her destitute, the pittance she gets needing to go for his debts? She's had about as good a home as any girl should want, and your mother and the ministers have dealt faithfully with her concerning her soul."
Ephraim made a movement of the head as if for a moment he could have stood upright, feeling in one respect innocent; then again there was nothing but the droop of shame visible.
His mother looked at him with eyes that were red with weeping. She had been wiping them with fierce furtive rubs of her handkerchief; now she was rubbing the handkerchief, a hard ball, in the palm of one hand. Perhaps grief at Susannah's loss had been dominant until Ephraim's accusation had fanned her anger. "She'd better have gone with him openly from the baptising. I never thought then that it was love-making she was after." Deep scorn was here expressed. "Religion! 'Twasn't much religion she had in her mind. And we treated her real kindly, Ephraim, thinking 'twas the hold of delusion they had upon her. 'Twould be very small use to bring her back even if you or your father could have found out which way they'd gone. 'Tisn't likely she'd stay long if you fetched her, seeing she's that sort of a girl, with a hankering for the man. There isn't a place in this house to lock her into unless it is the cellar."
It was perhaps the thought of the unspeakable degradation it would be to the worthy house to hold a girl as prisoner in the cellar, perhaps the dismal knowledge that that which had already befallen them and her was not much better than this, that caused his mother here to lose her self-control entirely and weep bitterly. Ephraim shrank under her words as if they had been the strokes of a whip striking him. When she had ended he went on heavily up the dark stair.
Both the men were in riding-dress. The elder man, when he had comforted his wife as best he might, laid aside his boots and whip determinedly, believing that the use for them, as far as concerned the search for his niece, was at an end. Upstairs, sitting between the three windows that looked east and north and south, Ephraim sat as long as exhaustion made rest necessary. He was still equipped for the road, thinking only which way it behoved him to travel, and when.
The next day, toward afternoon, Joseph Smith stood by the bedside of Angel Halsey. Susannah, wan and weary with a long night's nursing, was sitting beside the pillow. Smith looked upon them both benevolently. It was some minutes before he spoke. Susannah was too much in awe of him to say much, but his presence was welcome. Since Halsey's rational self had been lost in his delirium, loneliness like darkness that could be felt had pressed upon her.
"Our brother will be healed," said Smith at length. "It is given to me to know that he will be healed." He then spread his hands over the sick man and made a short prayer. There was much fervour in his words and his voice was loud.
"Give him to drink," said Smith.
"Biery's wife told me as long as he was in fever not to give him water."
Smith looked down upon her kindly, but he spoke in a tone of absolute authority. "My sister, I say unto thee give him water. It is given to me to know that he must have water and that he will do well."
"It is never done in such cases," said Susannah. "I remember when my father—" She had not the faith that Smith required of her.
Without a frown, with perfect gentleness, Smith fetched the water and, lifting the sick man's head, allowed him to drink eagerly. Halsey was obviously comforted.
Smith had something else to say. If he had not been who he was Susannah might have perceived that he was somewhat perplexed, even embarrassed. Just as a child does not easily attribute to the adult such hindering emotions, so she supposed him to be upon a plane above them.
He lingered by the bedside, apparently watching the sufferer. At length he said, "You set out with this young man—yesterday morning?"
"Yes, very early."
There was another pause, then he said, "Did you go before a justice of the peace?"
"A justice of the peace?" Then she added inconsequently, "My uncle is a justice of the peace." She had never heard of a civil marriage; she did not know in the least what he meant.
"Or—or a minister?"
She began to understand now.
"I married you myself, sister, and it was sealed in heaven, but I haven't got a license to marry, so that the Gentiles would say—that the knot wasn't tied, ye know." The last words were a lapse into common parlance. She had grown accustomed to the hybrid nature of his mannerism.
He had expected and feared to see her white face flame into excitement, but to Susannah it seemed a small thing now what the Gentiles might say. If the marriage was indeed sealed in heaven, then all was well. And if it was not, worse could not be. She was too weary now to respond to the prophet's worldly solicitude for her. Looking at the still unconscious Halsey, she felt that there was time enough for further action.
Smith said, "Emma would have come, but the child has spasms."
"We meant to go to you," said Susannah. "We lost our way. I only heard to-day where you were."
After a while he said, "I might stop here with our sick brother and send you to Emma, but there is a congregation called for to-night. Mr. Cowdery would have come, but he was at the baptising."
"Did you leave the baptising just to come and see us?" It occurred to her that from his point of view two stray disciples such as herself and Halsey could be of little importance compared with his appearance at the solemn function.
Smith busied himself giving Halsey more water. That done, he went away without further words. Susannah heard his horse gallop from the door. She knew that he had travelled some five miles to pay this visit, and she supposed that he desired to return if possible before the converts had come up from the water. His visit had undoubtedly brought her comfort. His response to her message had been prompt and kind. She knew now that his thoughts and Emma's were busy concerning her. And then, too, the sick man was better. He had gone quietly to sleep.
The woman of the house brought her for food an unusual delicacy. Smith had ordered this. Mrs. Biery made some remarks concerning him. She said that his coat seemed very old, but that he had given her money and bid her attend diligently upon the sick man and his wife. Susannah, who knew how little money the Smiths had hitherto possessed, how many things they must want for themselves, was touched.
As her spirits revived, her faith and hope in the new sect revived also. She looked among the few possessions Halsey had brought with him for the precious copy of the Book of Mormon, and sat reading it by Angel's bedside while the autumn sun was sinking.
Sometimes she heard a traveller stop at the inn door and pass on again. At dusk there was a sounds of horses coming with speed. To her surprise Joseph Smith came into the room again. He looked as if he had been riding hard, but he spoke as quietly as though he had gone only from that room to the next.
"I have brought a gentleman who can marry you according to the law of the State." Susannah had gone forward to greet him, but now she looked suddenly back toward the unconscious man, whose form was almost indistinguishable in the dusk.
Smith brought candles and set them at the foot of the bed. He took Halsey by the hand and lifted him to a sitting posture, telling him in clear strong tones what was required of him. Halsey understood. He became completely conscious under Smith's influence, and for the hour almost strong. He would know where he was and how he came there, who the minister was that had come. He even required that this stranger should show his license to marry.
The minister was a common-looking man, small, shaggy as to the beard, business-like. He knew nothing of Joseph Smith's prophetical claims, and cared only to know that Susannah was over eighteen years of age. Marriage was a thing easily accomplished in that day and region. A few minutes more and Susannah was a wife.
In after years, when she used to think of Angel Halsey as having gone before her into the unseen, Susannah held the belief that the part of him which she would meet there would be that which shone out in the rare half-playful smiles he gave, in the glance which, at the moment of smiling, he bent on her. He was a very grave man, shrewd, in many ways, in others as simple as a child, but above all greatly religious. His religion, however deep might be its root, was also always upon the surface. Only now and then, when, as at their first meeting, he recognised in his serious way that something else was required if he would truly hold communion with Susannah, the smile would come as from some inward part of his spirit, like a dawning light slowly breaking through the surface, soon withdrawn again by the power of custom. When he thus smiled, Susannah in those days trusted him absolutely, avowed herself entirely to his service, and felt within her heart a large measure of affection.
Halsey's was the first case of illness in the newly-formed sect that called itself already "TheChurch of Christ." Joseph Smith and Cowdery and a man named Whitmer, with whom the Smiths were now housed, having consulted upon it, decided that they must begin at once to carry out the commands of Scripture. They came together, therefore, and anointed Halsey with oil, laying their hands upon him and praying fervently. Halsey, believing himself to be healed, got up from his sick-bed, and his recovery progressed rapidly.
Full of excitement, fervour, superstition, and faith, the apostles of the new doctrine were fully persuaded that they might expect a literal fulfilment of the promise that signs and wonders should follow them that believe. The fierce opposition and hatred which were roused by the reports of their doings are easily accounted for when we consider that their opinions had to encounter that curious distortion of reason which has caused religious warfare in all times and places to become the worst sort of warfare, and the fact which Smith himself had acknowledged when he first saw Susannah, that many evil reports about him had formerly been true; then also the new sect produced vehement psychical disturbance wherever it touched the surrounding population, and many things occurred which might, or might not, be termed miracles, according to the interpretation of the observer. It was no longer possible for Joseph Smith to ride, as he had done on the day of Susannah's marriage, with a minister of one of the older sects. He became very notorious, and to every one except those who were interested enough in his doctrine to give him a fair hearing, his name became a synonym for all evil.
Halsey remained with Susannah at John Biery's hotel. Halsey was one of the few converts who could afford to live in comparative comfort and to pay something for the entertainment of destitute disciples. For that reason the landlord, John Biery, held himself from the religious quarrel that was shaking the region.
Even before Halsey had regained his strength he drove Susannah to swell the congregation at the preachings which were daily taking place in different places within the township, for such converts as had already professed themselves were gathered now in the neighbourhood of Fayette.
Experiences came to Susannah in such quick succession that this was not a time of reflection. Such part of her husband's religion as she could appropriate she endeavoured very sincerely to embrace. After the manner of the thought, of the time she supposed that the sect was either right or wrong—if right, all right; if wrong, all wrong. Sometimes the ghastly fear that her growing belief was false would arise with hideous menace.