Susannah was thrilled with excited distress.  She was not prepared to make an abrupt decision, and it appeared that if she desired to join this company she must go that evening or not at all.

During the hours of the morning her mind cowered, dismayed.  Should she now renounce her husband’s sect, refusing to suffer with them?  She had not as yet fortitude to do this.  Halsey’s eyes, the touch of his hand, her baby’s voice lisping the tenets of their faith in repetition of his father’s solemn tones, these were sights and sounds as yet too near her.  To her shocked fancy the child and his father were only gone out of sight, but near enough to be cruelly hurt by her public perversion.  And, moreover, if she should take this course she must write to Ephraim at once, for she could not well remain where she was without definite purpose in view.

Susannah had sought seclusion in which to think, and the younger son of the house intruded himself.  He was perhaps about thirty years of age, a burly man, resolute and passionate.  He spoke fairly enough.  The Danite himself had said that the journey to which she was haled by her friends was one of untold hardship, its end uncertain; he offered her all that an honest and prosperous man could offer, but went on to urge on his own behalf the strength of those sentiments which he had learned to entertain for her—­his admiration (Susannah sickened at the word), his love (she shrank in fear).

She rose up with the moan of a hunted thing.  She did not pause to make excuses for the hunter, to consider the pioneer life that wots little of sentiment in proportion to utility; she only saw again the grave at Haun’s Mill and the white faces of her dead upturned to hers.  It seemed that this man, with the consent of his people, was urging his suit as it were beside the very corpse of her husband.  The Danite had shown Angel reverence, had shown by his every word and glance that he counted her as belonging to the dead man whose blood he carried at his heart.

Susannah rode out from that temporary home at nightfall upon the Danite’s horse.

CHAPTER XIV.

It was the season of rain and sleet, of rude northerly winds.  The roads, across a tract of flat fields and in among the low woods that fringed the rivers, were heavy with mud.

After riding half the night on a pillion behind the Danite, Susannah entered the Mormon camp.  Up and down the sides of a dirty road, in waggons, in small tents, and in the open, men, women, and children were lying huddled in family groups.  How far these crowds extended she could not see.  Watch-fires were burning here and there, and in the fields on either side a patrol of Missouri militia were heard scoffing and shouting in the darkness.  The Danite answered the challenge of one of these men with apparent meekness; Susannah perceived that he had gained in self-control.  When they had entered the road,