A gray vaporous tint was being spread over the heavens, folding this portion of earth in its shadow and darkening the interior of the cabin which Susannah entered.

Upon a decent bedstead reclined a young woman.  Everything near her was orderly and clean.  She belonged, it would seem, to a better class of the social order than the other, certainly to a higher type of womanhood.

“What have you got?  Is it a kitten?” asked Susannah.  Advancing across the dark uneven floor, she perceived that the reclining woman was caressing some small creature beneath her shawl.

“Emmar, Emmar,” said Lucy Smith, “tell Miss from the mill about the angel that appeared to Joseph.”

Emma Smith was a nobly made, dignified young creature.  She looked at Susannah’s beautiful and open countenance, and straightway drew forth the young thing she was nursing for her inspection.  It was an infant but a few days old.  Surprised, reverent, and delighted, Susannah bent over it.  The child made them all akin—­the squalid old hysteric, the respectable young mother, the beautiful girl in her silken shawl.

Some minutes elapsed.

“Emmar, Miss here doesn’t know nothing about Joseph.  She says it ain’t true.”

The young mother smiled frankly.  “I suppose it seems very hard for you to believe,” she said, “but it’s quite true, and the Lord told Joseph where to find the new part of the Bible that he’s going now to make known to the world.  Shall I tell you about it?”

Susannah looked at her dazed; she had heretofore heard of the Smiths’ doctrines as of the ravings of the mad.  It had not occurred to her that a sane mind could regard them seriously.

“It was seven years ago,” said Emma, “at the time the big revival was here and Joseph was converted; but he heard all the Methodists and Baptists and Presbyterians disputing together as to which of them was right, and he felt so burdened to know which was right, and he felt a sort of longing in him to be a great man, bigger than the revival preacher that had been here that all the people ran after, and Joseph felt that he could be bigger than that, and preach and tell all the people what was right, if they would all come to hear him.  And he was so burdened that one day he went out into the woods, and he began crying and confessing his sins and calling out to God to show him what was right and make him a great preacher.  Well, when he had been crying and going on like that for a long time, he just fell right down as if he was asleep, and it was all dark till a light fell from heaven and an angel came in the light.”  Emma went on to tell of Smith’s vision and first call, of his backsliding and final commission.

Susannah stared.  The young mother was a reality; the baby was a reality.  Could the statements in this wild story bear any relation to reality?  The old woman stood by, nodding and smiling.  The young girl’s mind became perplexed.