In the minute that Smith was wrestling with the farmer for the possession of the whip, Susannah wrung her hands in an agony and ran forward toward the hotel, screaming aloud for help; then, afraid of what might befall in her absence, she ran back.  By this time the two men had thrown Smith down.  Even then he showed his strength, for they struggled hard to get the whip, which he had seized from them.

In her storm of feeling Susannah for the first time came out from the habits of girlish timidity.  Hardly knowing what she said, what she was about to say, she heard the words of her own fierce indignation ring out on the air of the mild autumn morning.  The scene—­the bare road, the sere weeds and grasses, the prostrate prophet, the flushed faces of the two burly countrymen upturned to hers as they stooped, crushing him down—­all was photographed on her mind by excitement.

By the intensity of her upbraiding she arrested the attention of Smith’s enemies for a minute till, as if he revolted against his own weakness, one of them gave vent to a loud jest, at which the other laughed.

The words meant nothing to Susannah, nothing more than the Latin words of the lesson-book that lay torn and muddy at her feet, but Smith no sooner heard them than he hurled himself from the ground with almost superhuman strength.

Both men were forced in self-defence to close upon him.  Smith shouted aloud, although a hand on his throat almost choked him, “Go to the hotel, Mrs. Halsey; go in to your husband.”  Susannah knew now that he was fighting for her, not for himself; the allegiance of his glance gave her a thrill of loyalty to him which was wholly new.

Two men ran out from the hotel, and behind them John Biery.  When they neared the place the farmer and his accomplice got into their gig and called back fierce threats against Smith as they went.  John Biery was a constable, yet, although he saw that Smith had been brutally assaulted, he made no attempt to pursue and capture the offenders.  The other men contented themselves with picking up his hat and book and remarking that the men that had run away hadn’t had no sort of right, and that Smith ought to have the law on them.  Susannah was the more enraged by this refusal to interfere.

Smith wiped his face from dust and blood.  It pleased Susannah’s love of dignity to observe that when he spoke it was not in impotent wrath.

“Go in to your husband, Mrs. Halsey, and tell him to rejoice that we are accounted worthy to suffer.”

That was not exactly the news that Susannah did bring when she went back to her husband’s room.  Her feelings were so upwrought that it was some time before, in pouring out to Halsey her indignation, she could find relief.  Whatever might or might not be the truth of Smith’s heart, it remained true that in this persecution the many were ranged against the few, and were lashing each other on by false reports