The sermon was finished.  There was a silence at its end so unexpected that none in the crowd broke it.  It seemed for those moments to reach not only into the hearts of the crowd, but into the wide, empty vault of sunny blue above them, and over the open fields and golden woods.  Then, before the wrath of the crowd had gathered strength to break into violence, Smith went down into the water and called loudly to all such as felt the need of saving their souls to enter upon the heavenly pilgrimage by the gate of his baptism.  His adherents had cast themselves upon their knees in prayer.  Susannah saw the strong, dark face of Oliver Cowdery looking up to the sky as though he saw the heavens opened, and she saw Angel Halsey look at herself, and then, clasping his hands over his fair young face, bow himself in supplication.

A man, ragged in dress, and bearing the look of ill deeds in his face, made his way out of the crowd into the water.  He was a stranger to the place, and the spectators looked on in silent surprise.  Before Smith had dipped him in the stream and blessed him another man came forward, pale and thin, with a hectic flush upon his cheeks.  He was a well-known resident of Manchester; all knew that his days on earth must be few.  A low howl began to rise, loudest on the outskirts of the crowd, but the fact that the man was dying kept many silent, feeling that the doomed may surely have their own will.

Before Joseph Smith had spoken his benediction over this trembling, gasping creature, when Halsey had left his kneeling to spring forward and lead him to the shore, Susannah began to move forward to the water.  No one who saw her move at first dreamed of what she sought.  Her aunt had pushed on some distance farther and stood waiting, almost too astonished at this last baptism to notice that she was separated from her charge.  Now, when she saw Susannah pushing forward, she only wondered with others what she would be at, and spoke to her ineffectually, without the shriek and struggle which she made when the girl was beyond her reach.

So Susannah, moving like one in an agonised dream, came to the edge of the pool.  Among the praying band there was no doubt as to her intention, no astonishment; the kneeling men gave instant thanks to God for her decision, and Halsey, having helped the feeble man to land, led Susannah down into the water, his face illuminated by the victory of faith.

Susannah heard now her aunt’s wild shrieks; she heard too the surging of the crowd, but the meaning of neither sound came to her.  She waded on to where Smith stood, with only the dazed sense of a goal to be reached.  She was perfectly passive in his hands as he dipped her beneath the surface and raised her up, but she listened to the blessing he pronounced with a sudden leap of the heart, feeling that now at last the misery of fear was past and the demand of God satisfied—­it must be so because it had cost so much.