in apple bloom.  The blue jays were calling and flying in low horizontal flights.  The valley stretched to the south-east, then curved; a little mountain barred the view, upon whose pine-trees the distant air began to tinge with blue.  On the curving bluffs on either side the trees stood in stately crowds; hardly a leaf had fallen, except from the golden walnut-trees; the colour of the foliage was for the most part like the plumage of some green southern bird, iridescence of gold and red shot through.  To her right, where a part of the long hill had been cleared of trees, the sun shone upon bare gullies in the soap-stone cliffs, making the colour of that particular brown bit of earth very vivid.  Everywhere a soft autumn haze was lying, and above white clouds were swinging across the pale blue sky.

After threading the valley path for a mile Susannah was ascending the bluff to get to the level of the upper farms, when, much to her surprise, she came, as once before upon the hill Cumorah, upon Joseph Smith.  He was lying under a group of giant walnut-trees, whose boles were sheltered from the road by a natural hedge of red dogwood and brambles.  He had apparently been occupied at his devotions, but she only saw him arising hastily.  This time there was no peep-stone; it had long since been discarded.  The prophet had a Bible in his hand, and it was evident that he had been weeping.  It was in those lands the habit of religious men of all sects to make oratories of the woods.  Susannah’s only desire was to pass and leave him undisturbed, but he spoke.

He began severely, “Sister Susannah Halsey, it is not meet that a woman should stray so far from home and without companions.”

For a moment Susannah stood abashed.  Unaccustomed to censure, she supposed that she must have done wrong.  “I have walked this way before,” she began meekly, “but if—­” She stopped here, her own judgment in the matter beginning to assert itself.

The prophet had forgotten his reproof.  At all times his conversation was apt to reveal that sudden changes of mental phase took place within him apparently without conscious volition.  He now exclaimed with more modest mien, “It is, no doubt, by the will of the Lord that you are come, for I stood in sore need of comfort, for the revelation of the truth is a trial hard to endure, and at times very bitter.”

“Is it?” asked Susannah intently.  It was impossible but that her long curiosity should find some vent, and yet she shrank inwardly from her own prying.

The prophet leaned against a huge bole.  The ground at his feet was covered with yellow walnut leaves and the olive-coloured nuts.  The sunlight fell upon him in patches of yellow light.  He opened the Bible, turning over the leaves of the Old Testament as if making a rapid survey of its history in his mind.

“Sister Halsey,” he began, “when the favour of the Lord rested chiefly upon the Jewish nation, at the times of the patriarchs and David, and when Solomon, arrayed in all his glory and in the greatness of his wisdom, reigned from Dan to Beersheba, mustn’t those have been the times when the people walked most closely with the Lord?”