mind, which had relaxed into confidence, grew visibly firmer. He
assumed the teaching tone.

"No, Mrs. Halsey, the only thing that I asked you not to mention was
that I had any light of revelation on a point on which most of our minds
is already made up."

"Mr. Smith, you can't possibly be in the slightest doubt but that it
would be very wicked for any man now to have more than one wife."

"I've heard a great many of the ministers who in times past, in the time
of our bondage we heard and believed, say as it would be very wicked for
any one nowadays to take God at His word and expect Him to do a miracle
or heal the sick; but I've come to the conclusion, Mrs. Halsey, that it
isn't a question of what we in our ignorance and prejudice might think
wicked, but it's a question of what's taught in this book, looked at
without the eye of prejudice and tradition. What we call civilisation is
too often devilisation--_devilisation_, Mrs. Halsey."

He tapped the book. He was becoming oratorical. "The idea of one wife
came in with the Romans. 'Twas no institution of Jehovah, Mrs. Halsey."

Susannah, more accustomed to his oratorical vein than to private
conference, became now more frank and at ease.

"You said you didn't know that the idea was from the Lord, Mr. Smith,
and I don't think it is. I don't think you'll entertain it very long,
and I don't think, if you did, many of the Saints would stay in your
church."

She bade him good-day, and went on up the slope. When she was walking
along the brink of the bluff in the open beyond the nut-trees she heard
him call. He came after her with hastened gait, Bible still in hand. She
was surprised to find that what he had to say was very simple, but not
the less dignified for that.

"I sometimes think, Sister Halsey, that you look down on us all as if we
weren't good enough for you, although you're too kindly to let it be
seen. According to the ways of the world, of course, it's so. If I'm as
rough and uneducated as most of our folks, at least I can think in my
mind what it would be not to be rough, and I can think sometimes how it
all seems to you."

His words appealed directly to strong private feeling which had no
outlet. While she stood seeking a reply the natural power that he had of
working upon the feelings of others, vulgarly called magnetism, so far
worked in connection with his words that tears came to her eyes.

"I don't often think about my old life," she said with br