t sacred in her
eyes, nor Smith a prophet. "Do you think," she asked the old man
wistfully, "that the Mormons have ever been the aggressors, that they
have committed any of the atrocities they are accused of?"

"In some cases they have pillaged, and burned, and murdered; they
wouldn't be human if some of them hadn't got fierce under the treatment
they have been receiving; but when a man like Atchison, who has been
scouring the country and knows pretty well what has happened, prefers to
resign his honourable office rather than fight against them, you may be
sure they are not very far in the wrong. Injuries, you know, will always
set a few men mad. There is your elder, Rigdon, for instance; when he
got here and heard of some of the things your folks had suffered, he up
and made a wild oration on the 4th of July, and said that if any more
outrages were committed on the Mormons, the Mormons would up and
exterminate all the Gentiles in the State. But it has been well enough
seen by any one who had eyes to see that no such language was ever
countenanced by the real rulers of your sect."

When Susannah thanked the old man for his candour he drove his moral
once more. "You see, madam, I can look at things as they are because I
am not bound by any religion to look at them in any particular way."

Susannah rose up when the old man's story was ended, and stood for some
minutes looking wistfully out through the window panes upon the leafless
and storm-swept fields. They two were together in the long, scantily
furnished living-room at the end of the long table. Her figure was
stronger, more true in its proportions, than when she had been a girl.
Her hair, trained into smooth obedience, was fastened within the muslin
cap she had fashioned for herself, tied Quaker fashion under her chin.
Her face was very white, as if, having blanched with terror in the
tragedy of Haun's Mill, the life-blood had not as yet returned to it.

At last she said simply, "I thank you, sir."

The old man looked most approvingly at her form and at the subtle
witchery which the eagerness of imprisoned thought gave to reticent
features, at the depth of her blue eye. "I wish, my dear, that you could
see your way to give up your religion and remain with us."

"I thank you, sir," she said again, and went back to the household tasks
she had fallen into the habit of performing.

She was not eating the bread of dependence. In such a place, where
woman's work is