ah if the Mormons had retained all her property, and what
destination she now proposed for herself; and then with great delicacy
informed her that there was a proposition among the passengers to make
a collection, to defray the expenses of her whole journey.

Susannah's cheek paled again.

"How could I return it if it came from so many?" she asked. Her white
hands were clasping and unclasping themselves. Must it indeed be by
means of such humiliation that she saved herself from Angel's Church?

The Governor determined upon further generosity. "If you would prefer,
take it from me as a loan," he said.

She gave him Ephraim's address. It was so long since she had spoken her
cousin's name to any one that tears came when she felt herself bound to
explain that she was not certain that he was alive.

"He is probably alive. Ill news travels fast."

She blessed the dapper gentleman for this unfounded opinion, for the
kindness that prompted it, more than for all else that he had done.

His advice was that Susannah should continue upon that boat with them as
far south as Cairo, in order to take advantage of the steam-boats now
plying on the Ohio River, so that the expense and weariness of the land
journey would be diminished to the small space between the uppermost
point on the Ohio and the western entrance of the Erie Canal. There were
several men upon the boat, he said, who could commend her to the care of
every captain on the Ohio.

Susannah felt too weak and weary to say more in defence of the morals of
Nauvoo. She could not struggle against the fact that her claim to the
generosity of which she stood in such helpless need was recognised and
satisfied by the hatred of these Gentiles.

When in the succeeding days she had time to meditate, while she spent
many a long hour on the decks of river-boats watching the shimmering
lights and shades that pass upon open river surfaces, the perplexing and
contrasting aspects of her situation played in like manner upon her
heart.

She had suffered so much, such long and deadly ill, as a member of this
almost innocent sect, suffered bravely in protest against the vile
injustice of the persecution, and now that she was escaping from
miseries inflicted by this same sect, she was wrapped in the kindly
reverse side of the persecuting spirit, and carried home in it, with all
the deference that would be accorded to a lost child. She was too tired
and helpless now to defy the good thus