till, warm air that a few minutes before
had seemed instinct with prayer was now vibrating to the howls and
taunts and curses of the mob. Susannah had no doubt that these, who were
now her friends, were being killed; their sufferings justified her to
herself and produced a fierce exaltation in the step which she had
taken. In her experience of life she thought that the mob would turn
upon her next, and stood waiting, every muscle tense, her hands
clenched, feeling excitedly that she would rather die than live to see
such intolerable wrong.

This tension of nerve relaxed somewhat when her uncle lifted her
forcibly into the waggon. With eyes wide open with horror and lips
trembling, she asked, "Did they kill them, uncle?"

"No, child, they only gave them a good trouncing in their own pond." He
choked here, out of pity for her, keeping back the torrent of his anger.

Even at this early date it was bruited that Joseph Smith exercised some
unseemly force of will by which he distorted the reason of his converts.
This report explained the fact that for the first day after the shock of
Susannah's baptism her aunt and uncle did not lay the blame of it at her
door, did not argue or persuade, only watched her as one recovering from
a strange disease. But in the afternoon of that first day the pent-up
fever of the aunt's wrath against those whom she thought to blame broke
forth, and almost in delirium.

The last hot weather of the autumn still held; in the same still hour of
the afternoon, the hour in which Susannah's baptism had taken place the
day before, Angel Halsey, pallid with his yesterday's beating and
ill-usage, but steadfast and even joyful of face, walked up to the front
door of the magistrate's house.

This door opened upon an unfrequented entrance-hall. Susannah heard the
knock, heard her aunt move with the dignity befitting an expected
visitor. Then she heard Ephraim's step on the stair for the first time
that day, and reflected dully that he must have seen the advent of some
important person from his window to be thus answering the call of the
door.

After that she heard words that had the sound of suppressed screams in
them. She realised that the house mistress was ordering some enemy from
her door. These commands were not obeyed, and Susannah, hearing that the
intruder remained, began in fear to suspect the meaning of the
intrusion. As she rose the report of a fire-arm startled her from all
the remnants of h