n. "They may find out that baby
is alone," she said; "they're wicked enough to injure him out of
revenge."

Along the wooden pavements of Gallatin, past the gaily-painted wooden
houses, through the doors of which whole families were now emerging to
ask the cause of disturbance, Susannah fled miserably, her cheeks
blanched beneath her veil, her heart within weeping.

The sun was shining brightly on just and unjust; the gardens of Gallatin
were brilliant with such flowers as had bloomed in the August when she
first met her husband. Susannah felt then that the reason why she
desired to clasp and guard the sleeping child she had left was that he
was Angel's son; the pity for injured innocence had been from the first
until now her strongest passion, and at the thought of Halsey, innocent
and gentle, in the midst of the brutal fight she had left, her soul wept
as it were the scalding tears that her eyes refused to shed.

The boy lay in rosy sleep, a woman of the inn keeping a kindly eye upon
him. Probably nothing but a mother's love could have fancied him of
sufficient importance to attract public attention, but Susannah, locking
her door, knelt by the bed, and spreading protecting arms above him,
listened with strained senses for news of Halsey's injury or death. For
years she had feared that the violence she had seen wreaked upon others
would touch her husband; violence offered to herself would have seemed a
trivial grief in comparison. The fear that has long harped upon sore
nerves has a cumulative action upon the pain of its realisation.

Susannah found herself giving forth short ejaculatory whispers of prayer
upon the close air of the plain, small room in which she knelt. It was
such prayer only as we come at by inheritance, prayer that is one of the
habits by which the fittest have survived.

Before two hours were past Halsey had returned. He was bruised and much
shaken, but appeared unconscious of injury, and made light of it. The
open fight had ended with no decisive victory for either party; the
chief result appeared to be that malice on either side was for the hour
exhausted. Whether because of this or because Halsey gave himself to
prayer on behalf of his brethren, the polls were opened quietly at noon
and the Mormons voted with the other citizens.

In the cool of the evening Susannah was sitting beside her husband
holding the sleeping child. The window of their humble room was open,
not to any broad, fair la