promised delights, as
Susan Peckaby; and she had made her own private arrangements to steal
off secretly, leaving her unbelieving husband to his solitary fate. As
it turned out, however, she was herself left; the happy company stole
off, and abandoned her.

Brother Jarrum so contrived it, that the night fixed for the exodus was
kept secret from Mrs. Peckaby. She did not know that he had even gone
out of the house, until she got up in the morning and found him absent.
Brother Jarrum's personal luggage was not of an extensive character. It
was contained in a blue bag; and this bag was likewise missing. Not,
even then, did a shadow of the cruel treachery played her darken the
spirit of Mrs. Peckaby. Her faith in Brother Jarrum was of unlimited
extent; she would as soon have thought of deceiving her own self, as
that he could deceive. The rumour that the migration had taken place,
the company off, awoke her from her happy security to a state of raving
torture. Peckaby dodged out of her way, afraid. There is no knowing but
Peckaby himself may have been the stumbling-block in the mind of Brother
Jarrum. A man so dead against the Latter Day Saints as Peckaby had shown
himself, would be a difficult customer to deal with. He might be capable
of following them and upsetting the minds of all the Deerham converts,
did his wife start with them for New Jerusalem.

All this information was gathered by Jan. Jan had heard nothing for many
a day that so tickled his fancy. He bent his steps to Peckaby's, and
went in. Jan, you know, was troubled neither with pride nor ceremony;
nobody less so in all Deerham. Where inclination took him, there went
Jan.

Peckaby, all black, with a bar of iron in his hand, a leather apron on,
and a broad grin upon his countenance, was coming out of the door as Jan
entered. The affair seemed to tickle Peckaby's fancy as much as it
tickled Jan's. He touched his hair. "Please, sir, couldn't you give her
a dose of jalap, or something comforting o' that sort, to bring her to?"
asked he, pointing with his thumb indoors, as he stamped across the road
to the forge.

Mrs. Peckaby had calmed down from the rampant state to one of
prostration. She sat in her kitchen behind the shop, nursing her knees,
and moaning. Mrs. Duff, who, by Jan's help, had survived the threatened
death fro "cholic," and was herself again, stood near the sufferer, in
company with one or two more cronies. All the particulars, Susan
Peckaby's