d on, and she was forced to follow for a few steps to
ask an explanation. She tied her kerchief over her head and the thick
white dust covered her slender shoes.

"What do you want me to come for?" she asked.

He looked upon her, colouring again with the effort to express what was
to him sacred. "It has been given to me to pray for thy soul. To-day, as
I prayed, it was borne in upon me that thou shouldst be with me in the
waters of baptism."

Susannah paused on the road, planting the heels of her shoes deeply in
the dust. "I will not," she cried. "I will never believe in Joseph
Smith."

"And yet it has been revealed, friend, that thou art one of the elect.
The time will come very soon when thou wilt believe to the salvation of
thy soul."

He walked slowly onward, and after a minute Susannah, with quickened
steps, followed him, in high anger now. "I do not believe in the
revelations of Joseph Smith," she cried. And because he did not appear
offended she spoke more rudely, catching at phrases to which she had
become accustomed. "If the salvation of my soul should depend upon it, I
would rather lose it than believe."

But when she had said these last words a little gasp came in her breath,
and her heart quailed in realising the possibility of which she had
spoken. Her own angry words had diverted her attention from questioning
the reasonableness of the new faith to the fearful contemplation of what
might be the result of rejection.

If she quailed at her own speech, the grief of the young Quaker was more
obvious. He put up his hands as if in fear that she should add to her
sin by repeating her words. Quiet as was his demeanour, the emotional
side of his nature had evidently been deeply wrought upon to-day, for
when he tried to speak to reprove her, grief choked his utterance. It
was not at that time a strange thing for men under the influence of
religious convictions to weep easily. On the contrary, it was accounted
by evangelists a sign of great grace; but Susannah, accustomed only to
the reserve of English gentlemen and her uncle's stern Puritan
self-repression, seeing this young Quaker weep for her sake, was greatly
touched. She became possessed by an excited desire to console him.

The young man turned, weeping as he went, into a little wood that here
bordered the road. Susannah followed, full of ruth, thinking that he
merely sought temporary shade.

They had proceeded under the trees a few paces when Emma S