She made an impatient movement of her head.  “I know,” she said, “that there is no truth in that story.”  She moved a little away from him; she was becoming oppressed by his still earnestness.

“Isn’t it any proof to you that I hadn’t the wits nor the education to make the book?” His words were wistful.

She sat down on the sill of the open window, the only seat in the room, and looked out on the moist earth.

“I guess you want to get rid of me,” he said, “but I can’t go till I know how it is with you, for I’ve been wrestling in prayer this night concerning you.”  Then after a minute he said, “Our brother gave you the money that he found on the person of your husband’s murderer?”

“I paid it into the treasury.”

“But if you don’t believe, maybe you are thinking of going east?”

“Do you think I could use the price of my husband’s blood for that?  It is not for me to know whether the avengers of blood are right or wrong in a land where there is no law, but the money belonged to your Church.”

He looked at her as one who has made a study of a certain class of objects looks at a fine specimen, as a jeweller looks at a gem of the first water.  This man, with the genius for priesthood, was a connoisseur in souls.  “Emmar wouldn’t have thought it no harm to keep the money the Danites gave her,” and he added more reflectively, “nor would I.”  There was admiration in his tones.

He came a step nearer now.  “If you went east who have you to go to?  Your uncle, he’s dead.”

Susannah started.  “How do you know?”

His manner was pitying.  “I saw it last night in the way I see things, in my visions, but Emmar she heard from some of the Saints that came from Palmyra that your uncle was sick unto death, and last night the Lord told me he was dead.”

She rose up suddenly.  She had known too many instances of this man’s curious knowledge of distant events to think of doubting.  Her first thought was that if Ephraim was in this trouble she must go to him at once.

“Your aunt will be awful jealous of your cousin now she’s only got him.”

Then under Smith’s pitying glance Susannah shrank from the first impulse to go.  She felt that there was something within her that merited his pity.  She could not rush to Ephraim without invitation, because it was not for his sake but for her own she wanted to go.  She believed that Smith knew it.  She felt thankful, as he had dared to accuse her of not loving her husband, that he had the kindness not to accuse her of this.  A certain awe of Smith came over her; he could be violent with those who were violent, coarse and jocular with his public who could be worked upon thus, but to her he spoke delicately, and he had shown her at times before this that he knew her better than she knew herself.