About four in the afternoon they left the forest and came to another and much larger house.  The Danite advanced here with more confidence and spoke with some men who gathered at their approach.  Afterwards three men, a father and sons, came and one after the other shook hands respectfully with Susannah.  Within the house she found a motherly woman, the wife of the elder son.  When Susannah’s misfortunes were related to her in undertones she cast her apron over her head and groaned as with pain.

Susannah thought that the concern of this household must arise from fear on their own account.  “Are you Latter-Day Saints?” she asked mechanically.

The eldest man, with the air of a patriarch, replied, “No, madam, we are not Saints; the fact is we don’t hold by religion of one sort or another; we just believe in being kind to our neighbours and living, good lives; so whatsoever your belief may be it is no affair of ours, and you shall rest here for the sake of our common humanity.  We’ll look after you, madam.”  He made a bow that was a queer mixture of uncouthness in keeping with his surroundings and a recollection of some more formal society.

The woman of the house, taking her apron from her head, suddenly bethought her of the best things that she had to offer.  Gently forcing Susannah into an elbow chair, she ran, and lifting an infant a few weeks old from its cradle, put it in Susannah’s arms.

The next night the young Danite went away.

CHAPTER XIII.

Only the outline of passing events was reported to Susannah in her haven of peace.  The elder man took her into his courtly care, and made a point of explaining to her what he thought she needed to know.  The newspapers were sedulously kept from her, and so reticent were the other members of the household on the subject of their contents that her heart constantly sickened at the thought of what she was not allowed to hear.

“You see, madam,” the old man explained, “it was Major-General Atchison that called out the militia in first defence of your people against Gilliam’s mob.  Gilliam had about three hundred men, and they started in the north of the State.  Well, Parks and Doniphan, commanding the militia called out by Atchison, seem to have set about fighting the mob sincerely enough.”  The old man pushed back his spectacles and rubbed his hair.  “Then you see, madam, that didn’t please Governor Boggs.  Here was the militia of his State shooting down his own good, honest Christian voters who keep him in office, that’s Gilliam’s men, and all the mob; so Boggs gets a lot of his men in all parts of the country to write him letters saying what dreadful crimes the Mormons are committing.  These letters will no doubt pass into history as a genuine account of your people’s doings.  Well! well!  I wouldn’t shock your prejudices, but I’d like just to point out by the way that it’s all done in the name of religion.  There’s Boggs has got an old mother who spends a lot of her time praying that the purity of the American religion may not be corrupted by the awful doctrines of Joe Smith.”