an was dying kept many silent, feeling that the doomed
may surely have their own will.

Before Joseph Smith had spoken his benediction over this trembling,
gasping creature, when Halsey had left his kneeling to spring forward
and lead him to the shore, Susannah began to move forward to the water.
No one who saw her move at first dreamed of what she sought. Her aunt
had pushed on some distance farther and stood waiting, almost too
astonished at this last baptism to notice that she was separated from
her charge. Now, when she saw Susannah pushing forward, she only
wondered with others what she would be at, and spoke to her
ineffectually, without the shriek and struggle which she made when the
girl was beyond her reach.

So Susannah, moving like one in an agonised dream, came to the edge of
the pool. Among the praying band there was no doubt as to her intention,
no astonishment; the kneeling men gave instant thanks to God for her
decision, and Halsey, having helped the feeble man to land, led Susannah
down into the water, his face illuminated by the victory of faith.

Susannah heard now her aunt's wild shrieks; she heard too the surging of
the crowd, but the meaning of neither sound came to her. She waded on to
where Smith stood, with only the dazed sense of a goal to be reached.
She was perfectly passive in his hands as he dipped her beneath the
surface and raised her up, but she listened to the blessing he
pronounced with a sudden leap of the heart, feeling that now at last the
misery of fear was past and the demand of God satisfied--it must be so
because it had cost so much.

When she came to herself she saw that the crowd, like a wild beast, had
sprung downward upon the disciples. Even in her first terrified glance
she was impressed by the strange and awful difference between the
distorted and hideous faces of the mob and the exalted calm of the few
men who had at this time fixed their minds on the unseen rather than the
seen. She looked up to Smith in the swift appeal of terror, and felt
once for all the huge courage by which his life was marked. His hand,
helping her to the shore, never trembled. He calmly directed her steps
into the quiet meadow before he gave himself to the battle.

When her person was no longer there to be protected, the Mormons gave
way at once before the gathering strength of the mob. She saw them
beaten down mercilessly; she saw Smith himself beaten and thrown
prostrate in the water. The s