o much reported, that the Mormons
follow wicked practices?"

"No, oh no, Ephraim; that is not true--mad, deluded perhaps, but not
wicked. The stories of wickedness told are malicious even where there is
a colour of truth, and for the most part there is none. In the matter of
daily life they abide by the laws of God and man, and nothing else is
taught."

It was the thought of the sacerdotal deception that she felt had been so
lately practised upon herself that caused her to put in the reserving
words "in the matter of daily life"; but when she remembered the malice
that had instigated report, the unlovely lives of the malicious
fault-finders, the evil stains that lie even upon the best lives, she
burst out, "There is not one in our community, Ephraim, who would stoop
to a cruel act either in word or deed. There is not one of us, even
among those who have recently repented from very wicked lives, who would
try to take the life of a defenceless man when he was, at a great cost
to himself, pursuing what he thought to be the path of duty--as you did,
Ephraim."

Before this he had kept his eyes upon the ground; standing still now, he
looked straight into hers. So for a minute they stood, the horse's head
drooping beside his shoulder, the woman upon the roadside erect,
passionate; around them the leafless wood through which the long
straight road was cut. The long level red beams of the sun struck
through between the gray trunks, burnishing the wet carpet of the fallen
leaf.

"Did you think it was I who fired?" he asked.

Then he went on with the horse, and she at the side.

She was utterly astonished. "Who, Ephraim--who fired?"

He looked straight in front of him again. "It was my mother. She
brandished the gun in his face. She couldn't have intended to shoot."

From Susannah's heart a great cloud was lifted. She felt no confused
need to readjust her thoughts; rather it was that in a moment her
apprehension of Ephraim's character slipped easily from some abnormal
strain into normal pleasure.

She pressed her hands to her breast as if fondling some delight.
"Forgive me," she said, "but I am so glad, oh, so very glad." She drew a
long breath as if inhaling not the autumn but the new sweetness of
spring.

So they went on a little way, he somewhat shy because of her emotion,
she meditating again, and this question pressed.

"And you think," she asked, "that your mother would receive me if I went
back with you? that