st her friends by death, came from
the east to Kirtland upon his invitation.

Susannah went down the hill one summer day to meet the travelling
company of new converts which brought Elvira Halsey. That young lady had
seen about twenty-five years of life's vicissitudes, and had sharpened
her wits thereon. Slight, pretty, and dressed with an effort at fashion
that was quite astonishing in the Kirtland settlement, Elvira sprang
from the waggon.

"I've come to be a Mormon. How do you begin?" With these words she
presented to Susannah a new type of character, fresh, and in some ways
delightful.

There was quite a crowd at the stopping place of the waggons. Halsey,
with other elders and Smith, came to welcome the newcomer. Elvira stood
on tip-toe, peeping about, pressing Susannah's arm with whispers.
"Which is Joe Smith, do tell me? Do you go down on your knees to him,
and does he pat your head?"

Guided by keen instinct, Elvira did not make remarks in Halsey's hearing
which would have shocked him, but perhaps by the same instinct she at
once claimed Susannah as a confidante in spite of some feeble
remonstrance.

"Are you not wrong to speak so lightly of our religion?" asked Susannah,
feeling that she was an elder's wife.

"First let me be sure that you have any religion to speak of." She
looked up prettily in Susannah's face. "What a beautiful creature you
are!" she cried. "And is it to please my cousin Angel that you wear a
snuff-coloured dress and a white cap and a neckerchief like an old lady
of seventy?"

As they proceeded together up the white curving road, over the crest of
the verdant bluff, Elvira announced her further intentions.

"I am not going to live with you. I am going to board with the Smiths. I
want to get to the bottom of this business, and see the apparitions
myself."

"There are no apparitions," said Susannah gently.

"Gold books, you know, flying about in the air, and the angel Maroni and
hosts of the slain Lamanites."

"You expect too much. Such visions as Mr. Smith had came but at the
beginning to attest his mission and give him confidence."

"Tut! I should think he had sufficient of that commodity. It is I who
require the confidence, and have I come too late?"

"I would question, if it did not appear unkind, why you have come at
all?"

"Bless you, it's relations, not revelations, that I came after."

"I fear that Angel will not be satisfied with that attitude," Susannah
sighed. Sh