re he mastered the
situation there in all its details. He promptly sent out a decree
against the new doctrine of what he called "lax manners." He preached a
great sermon in the open air that night. "A man shall kiss his own wife
and daughters and no other women," said Smith. The elders who had
preached from St. Paul's texts on the subject were accused of error and
called upon to recant. Smith commanded that the women should work and
the children should study, and he publicly pronounced Susannah to be a
fitting model for the women and a fitting teacher for the young.
Susannah had not as yet met Smith face to face when she found herself
made, as it were, an object of licensed admiration.

CHAPTER XVI.

It was that same evening, after Smith's commendation of Susannah, that
Darling decided to lay the destruction of her letter before the prophet,
hoping for approval.

Smith was looking over Darling's accounts in the tithing office, giving
voluminous and minute directions. The May night had closed in. The men
were in a corner of the large shed in which the stores were kept, a
corner fenced off for an office by a low wooden partition. The candle
flickered on the table between them.

The business side of Smith's soul was uppermost. He had power to keep in
mind a huge number of details, and to classify them, and he estimated
the relative importance of the classes as no other man would have
estimated it.

Darling interrupted before Smith's interest in business began to wane.
He prefaced his communication concerning Susannah by speaking of the
much shepherding needed by the sheep. Some, he said, had done worse than
be lax in manners; some had presumed to have revelations; some had
doubted the faith.

Here Darling paused, feeling sure of rousing Smith to the mood he
desired.

At the mention of revelations Smith's soul took a turn, like a ball on
its axis; the plain speech that he had been using about business and
stores and accounts changed into phraseology of a Scriptural cast, and
the shrewd glance of his blue eye into a more distraught and distant
look. Heretofore, as Darling well knew, heresy had been a greater evil
in his eyes than any other; but Smith had come now out of long months of
prison; days and nights in which a horrible death had faced him closely
had not passed over this particular soul of his dreams without moulding
it. It is noticed by all his historians that after this period he spoke
little "by