When she came to herself she saw that the crowd, like a wild beast, had sprung downward upon the disciples.  Even in her first terrified glance she was impressed by the strange and awful difference between the distorted and hideous faces of the mob and the exalted calm of the few men who had at this time fixed their minds on the unseen rather than the seen.  She looked up to Smith in the swift appeal of terror, and felt once for all the huge courage by which his life was marked.  His hand, helping her to the shore, never trembled.  He calmly directed her steps into the quiet meadow before he gave himself to the battle.

When her person was no longer there to be protected, the Mormons gave way at once before the gathering strength of the mob.  She saw them beaten down mercilessly; she saw Smith himself beaten and thrown prostrate in the water.  The still, warm air that a few minutes before had seemed instinct with prayer was now vibrating to the howls and taunts and curses of the mob.  Susannah had no doubt that these, who were now her friends, were being killed; their sufferings justified her to herself and produced a fierce exaltation in the step which she had taken.  In her experience of life she thought that the mob would turn upon her next, and stood waiting, every muscle tense, her hands clenched, feeling excitedly that she would rather die than live to see such intolerable wrong.

This tension of nerve relaxed somewhat when her uncle lifted her forcibly into the waggon.  With eyes wide open with horror and lips trembling, she asked, “Did they kill them, uncle?”

“No, child, they only gave them a good trouncing in their own pond.”  He choked here, out of pity for her, keeping back the torrent of his anger.

Even at this early date it was bruited that Joseph Smith exercised some unseemly force of will by which he distorted the reason of his converts.  This report explained the fact that for the first day after the shock of Susannah’s baptism her aunt and uncle did not lay the blame of it at her door, did not argue or persuade, only watched her as one recovering from a strange disease.  But in the afternoon of that first day the pent-up fever of the aunt’s wrath against those whom she thought to blame broke forth, and almost in delirium.

The last hot weather of the autumn still held; in the same still hour of the afternoon, the hour in which Susannah’s baptism had taken place the day before, Angel Halsey, pallid with his yesterday’s beating and ill-usage, but steadfast and even joyful of face, walked up to the front door of the magistrate’s house.

This door opened upon an unfrequented entrance-hall.  Susannah heard the knock, heard her aunt move with the dignity befitting an expected visitor.  Then she heard Ephraim’s step on the stair for the first time that day, and reflected dully that he must have seen the advent of some important person from his window to be thus answering the call of the door.