“It was Mr. Cowdery and Mr. Whitmer and Mr. Harris,” Emma said.  “Mr. Cowdery and Mr. Whitmer saw the gold plates held in the air, as it were by hands they couldn’t see, but Martin Harris he had to withdraw himself because he couldn’t see the vision, and he went away by himself and sobbed and cried.  But Joseph went and put his arm around him and prayed that his faith might be strengthened, and then he saw it.  So they three have written their testimony in the front of the book that’s being printed.”

A storm had now broken upon the house in torrents.  The door was shut.  Emma wrapped her child closer in her shawl.  Susannah sat sulky and disconsolate.  She had a vague idea that the vengeance of heaven was overtaking her for merely listening to such heresy.  Over against this was a shadowy doubt whether it might not be true, roused by Emma’s continued persistency.

“Is it any easier to believe that those things happened to folks when the Bible was written?  Don’t you believe that God appeared to Moses and Samuel and told them the very words to write down, and showed them visions; and isn’t He the same God yesterday, to-day, and for ever?  It’s just what it says in the Bible shall come about in the latter days.  It’s because of the great apostasy of the Church, no one really believing in Jesus Christ, that a new prophet had to appear—­that’s Joseph.”

“They do believe,” Susannah spoke sullenly.

“Well, there’s your aunt, Mis’ Croom.  Now she’s as good as there is in the modern Church, isn’t she?  She’s doing all she can to save her soul.  She can’t do it, for she don’t believe.  Why the Lord, He said that signs and wonders should follow them that believe.  Have they any signs and wonders up at your place?  And He said that believers must forsake all, houses and lands and all; what have your people forsook?  And as to its being hard to believe about Joseph—­you just take the things in the Bible, Elisha and the bears, for instance, and Paul bringing back Dorcas to life, and just think how hard they’d be to believe if you heard they happened yesterday, next door to you.  And with God all times and places is the same.  Souls is only saved by believing; the Lord says so, and accepting the things of faith to come to pass, and being baptized and giving up all and following; and it’s an awful thing to lose one’s soul.”

At this reiteration of the doctrine of the soul as a thing apart from the development of reason and character, Susannah rose, ready to cry with anger.  Her aunt’s agitation on the subject had left a sore to which the gentlest touch was pain.

“I don’t believe it,” she cried.  “I don’t believe God wants us to do anything except just good.  That’s what my father told me.  I’m going home.  I don’t care how it rains.”

Emma did not hear her.  Over her pale young face had come the peculiar expression of alert and loving listening.  She had detected the sound of a footstep which Susannah now heard coming heavily near.