sight of God and of my own conscience--my advice to
you is to be quit of such men and such scenes, but I dare not keep back
from you the truth that this one story, so far from lessening my
confidence in your husband's probity or in Smith's, has rather increased
it; for, being very ignorant men, they could not have heard of these
stories that I have told you, for I have read them only in rare books;
that they have reproduced the same incident seems rather to prove that
they have by accident stumbled upon the same fact--whether a dizziness
of the eyes, or an affection of the brain, or an actual counteraction of
gravity, I cannot tell."

She listened, drinking in each slow word. After all, then, to-day was
just like yesterday, and that which she had to decide was as to the
reasonableness of the whole new doctrine, as to her willingness to live
among such scenes and such men.

There had been no sudden madness or deceit to give her reason for sudden
revolt (perhaps her heart said excuse instead of reason).

Ephraim had grown very pale. After he had watched her for a while, he
said with a sad smile, "You will not come home with me to-day,
Susannah?"

"I must think over all this again, Ephraim. I don't know how these
things can be, but what you admit is very strange."

He knew from her tone that the die was cast; he had no heart to discuss
the laws that govern marvels.

"If at any time, any hour of the day or night, you should wish to come
to us, Susannah, the door is open."

"You have been very kind, Ephraim. There is not much use in my trying to
say anything about how good you are, but--" She stopped, thinking of her
recovered confidence in his character and her husband's; in this
thought she experienced an elevation of the spirits, a new hopefulness,
which, after the dreary blank of the morning's outlook, was like
sunshine after rain. With this elevation the religious habit of thought
which she had learned from Halsey intermingled. "O Ephraim," she cried,
"I believe that God sent you to give me back my faith."

He had nothing more to say after that. He rode away leaving her standing
upon the tawny carpet of the fallen leaf, standing in the pink sunshine
under naked trees, and looking after him with tears of gratitude in her
eyes. Ephraim looked back once, but not again.

CHAPTER XIII.

When Susannah was returning from her parting with Ephraim Croom, she
found Joseph Smith was walking slowly upon the road