essed with a devil."

Susannah wrapped her shawl tightly across her breast, a nervous movement
caused not by cold but by the desire to withdraw her real self from the
surrounding circumstance.

A tall thin man sitting by the table set down his mug with a clatter
upon it. "Wall now, tain't my idea thet thet's exectly what's taken
Newell. I saw a case of a man thet was taken under the preacher Finney.
'Twas over to Ithica. The hull town knew about it. A lot of folks went
in. I jest looked in when I was passing, and seen the man meself. He was
lyin' on the floor. His wife was aholdin' his head, but he didn't know
her. He hedn't no knowledge of any of the folks. He jest lay there
rollin', and his eyes was rollin'. And when Finney was fetched, Finney
he said 'twas 'conviction.' I don't know what the man was convicted of,
but 'twas 'conviction' Finney called it. He didn't say nothing about
being possessed with devils."

The third speaker was a small fat man. His face was smooth and had the
peculiar boylike appearance that chubbiness gives even to the
middle-aged; he had bright black eyes, and before he spoke he glanced at
Susannah critically.

"When they're taken that way under Finney," he said, as if meditating,
"'conviction' commonly means conviction of sins--their own sins, ye
know, not other folk's; and when they git up, if they've taken anything
wrongfully they hev to restore it fourfold afore the conviction will
leave off a-worrittin' them. I don't know how 'tis among the Mormons."
The last words were said in an undertone and he had dropped his eyes. It
would have required a brave man to treat Susannah to open sarcasm.

She stood looking from one to the other. She still wore her girlish
cottage bonnet, and as its fashion was, it had slipped backwards upon
the amber ringlets that hung upon her neck; but the girlish look was
fast passing from the face, the hair parting fell on either side of pale
cheeks.

"Oh, as to thet, 's fur as I know, one religion's as good as another,"
said the politic Biery.

Susannah looked at the fat, bright-eyed man who was no longer looking at
her. "I know" (her voice fell with a strange gentleness through the
thickened atmosphere of the room) "that there are many malicious stories
abroad about the dishonesty of our people which are not true."

But as she went up the stair she remembered that she had heard of no
case where reformation of character had been followed by the returning
of