inst the love of
her child and the long reverence she had yielded to her husband. The
true secret of human leadership is, perhaps, known only to the Divine
mind, perhaps also to the Satanic. It would certainly seem that the men
who chance upon the power and wield it, have often little understanding
of the law by which they work, and their critics less.

CHAPTER XV.

The Mississippi was filled with large cakes of floating ice. Another
company which had gone out from Far West some weeks before was still
encamped on the Missouri banks of the river. Yet other companies from
Far West came up before the main body of the Saints with which Susannah
had travelled was able to cross. The surrounding woods were cut down to
make shanties; the surrounding country was scoured for food. In the
intervening weeks, while they lay encamped on the banks, the last enemy
to be vanquished in that region, the malarial fever, grappled with the
sect and dealt deadly wounds. Illinois, shocked by the cruelty of her
sister State, held out kind hands and fed the fugitives to some extent,
and when April came, helped them to cross the river.

Elvira had been ill in one of the women's sheds, now shrieking in hot
delirium, now shaken with ague as if by a strong beast that worried its
prey. When they at last crossed the river to the city of Quincy,
Susannah was established with her charge, the one legacy of relationship
Halsey had left her, in a meagre home with some of the Saints who
already lived there.

Within a few days Susannah went to the tithing office, which had been
swiftly established for the relief of the destitute Saints, and asked
for paper on which she could write a letter. It was her first chance,
since leaving her last asylum, of writing the proposed letter to Ephraim
Croom. Elder Darling was officiating. She fancied that he looked at her
with rude curiosity.

Until this moment she had presented so sad an exterior, had seemed so
indifferent to all the ills of their common lot, that Darling and the
other men who had dealings with her had stood not a little in awe. As
outward physical details of suffering always appeal more largely to
common sympathy than inward grief, the manner of her loss had set a
temporary crown upon her head, to which the elders had knelt, refusing
to admonish her because she took no part in their public services, or
because, except for attention to the sick, she did not give much sign of
social comradesh