A large man of about twenty-five years of age entered from the bluster of the storm.  As Susannah was trying to push out past him into its fury, he paused, staring in rough astonishment.

Lucy hung on to her arm.  “Stay a bit!  Joseph must hold the umbrella over Miss.  Emmar, tell her she can’t no wise go alone.”

Susannah fled into the driving sheets of rain, but Joseph Smith, umbrella in hand, followed her.

CHAPTER III.

The umbrella was a very heavy one.  Susannah certainly could not have held it against the wind.  Joseph Smith held the shelter between Susannah and the blast, looking at her occasionally with a kindly expression in his blue eyes, but merely to see how far it sheltered her.

They walked in silence for about a quarter of a mile.  The rain swept upon her skirt and feet; she saw it falling thick on either side; she saw it beating upon Smith’s shoulder, upon one side of his hat, and dripping from his light hair.  The wind was so strong that the very drops that trickled from his hair were blown backward.  His blue coat was old—­not much protection, she thought, against the storm.

The false prophet had hitherto appeared quite as terrible to her imagination and as far removed from real life as the wild beast of story books; now he appeared very much like any other man—­rather more kind in his actions, perhaps, and distrait in his thought.  Susannah began to think herself a discoverer.

“You are not keeping the rain off yourself.”

“It don’t matter about me.  I don’t mind getting wet.”

His tone carried conviction.  After a while gratitude again stirred her into speech.

“I’m afraid you find it awfully hard holding up the umbrella.”

He gave a glance downward at her as she toiled by his side.  “Why you’re most blown away as it is.  You couldn’t get along without the umbrellar.”  Regarding her attentively for a minute, he added, “Emmar will be vexed when she hears that your dress got so splashed.”

They were both bending somewhat forward against the wind; the road beneath them was glistening with standing water.  When they passed by the woods the trees were creaking and cracking, and over the meadows hung shifting veils of clouds and rain.

“I guess I’d better not take you farther than Sharon Peck’s.  Your folks would be pretty mad if you walked through the village with Joe Smith.”

The lines round Susannah’s mouth strengthened themselves; she felt herself superior to those whose attitude of mind he had thus described.

“You have been very kind to come with me.  I’d like better to go home than stop, if it isn’t too far.”

“I guess not.  If you’d lived here longer you’d know that there was all manner of evil said about me, and the worst of it is that some of it’s true.  I’ve been a pretty low sort of fellow, and I hain’t got any education to speak of.”