indignation and pitiful love came to her eyes at the thought that Angel,
too, might be suffering this shameful treatment. Across some acres of
open ground she saw the Smiths' house, doors and windows lit by candles.
Thither she was hastening when, in the black space of the nearer field,
she almost fell upon a whitish form, grotesque and horrible, which was
rising from the ground.

"Who is it?" asked Joseph Smith.

He stood up now, but not steadily; his voice was weak, as if he had
been stunned, and his utterance indistinct because his mouth had
apparently received some injury. She thought of nothing now but that he
was Angel's master, and that Angel might be in like plight.

"What have they done? What is the matter?" she whispered tenderly, tears
in her voice.

"Is it you?" he asked curiously. He said nothing for a minute and then,
"They've covered me with the tar and emptied a feather-bed on me. If
ye'd have the goodness to tell Brother Johnson to come out to me, Mrs.
Halsey--"

"They have hurt you other ways," she said tremulously, "you are
bruised."

"A man don't like to own up to having been flogged, ye see; but Peter
and Paul and all of _them_ had to stand it in their time, so I don't
know why a fellow like me need be shamefaced over it. But if you'd be
good enough, Mrs. Halsey, to go and tell Emmar that I ain't much hurt,
and send Brother Johnson out with some clothes or a blanket--"

He stopped without adding that he would feel obliged. As she went she
heard him say with another sort of unsteadiness in his tone, "It's real
kind of you to care for me that much."

In her excitement she did not know that she was weeping bitterly until
she found herself surrounded by other shuddering and weeping women in
Emma's room; for other of the converts in Hiram, hearing of the violence
abroad, had crept to this house for mutual safety and aid.

It is the low, small details of physical discomfort that make the
bitterest part of the bread of sorrow. Now and afterwards, through all
the persecutions in which she shared, Susannah often felt this. If she
could have stood off and looked at the main issues of the battle she
might have felt, even on the mere earthly plane, exaltation. Yet one
truth her experience confirmed--that no human being who in his time and
way has been hunted as the offscouring of the world--no, not the
noblest--has ever had his martyrdom presented in a form that seemed to
him majestic. It is only t