's lodging which she knew that Emma Smith would not refuse.

In the village she saw that people were moving about and talking with an
air of excitement. When she turned to a quiet corner and asked an
elderly man for Mrs. Rigdon's house, he stared at her as if at an
apparition.

"Is it Sydney Rigdon's wife that you're wanting?"

Susannah had raised her veil, and he looked at her face with the
greatest curiosity. Flushed with exercise, braced by the sharp air, her
colour was brilliant and her eyes sparkling. Her plain dress and heavy
veil appeared to the man to be a disguise, so surprising to him was the
brilliancy of her face and the modulation of her voice.

"Do you not know where the Rigdons live?" she asked.

He was chewing tobacco, and now he spat upon the ground, not rudely, but
as performing an habitual action in a moment of abstracted thought. "Oh,
I know well enough, but if ye won't mind my saying a word to ye, young
lady, I'd advise ye to put up somewhere else. I've got darters of my
own--in course I don't know who ye may be or what ye may be doing
here." This last was added in an apparent attempt to attain to some
suspicion that he felt to be reasonable.

"You think ill of them because you despise their sect," she said gently,
"but I am the wife of one of the elders."

"Have ye got hold of some news that ye're carrying to them?" He evinced
a sudden interest that appeared to her extraordinary.

"What news?"

"Oh, _I_ don't know. I jest thought 'twas queer, if you'd got hold of
anybody's secrets, that you should be asking where they lived, straight
out and open in the street like this."

His words suggested to her only the idle fancies of prejudice. Some
other people drew near, and, dropping her veil, she was starting in the
direction in which he pointed when he spoke again in a more determined
voice. "You jest tell me one thing, will you?" He even laid his hand
upon her bridle with authority, "Are ye going to stop at Rigdons' all
night?"

"No."

"Sartin?"

When he received her reply he let go the bridle, saying in warning
tones, "Well, see that ye don't do it, that's all."

The incident left a disagreeable impression on Susannah's, mind, but she
did not attach any distinct meaning to it.

Rigdon and his wife were both within. Rigdon locked the door when
Susannah had entered. Then with crossed arms, standing where he could
watch against intruders from the window, he began to tell her news of
i