He tapped the book.  He was becoming oratorical.  “The idea of one wife came in with the Romans.  ’Twas no institution of Jehovah, Mrs. Halsey.”

Susannah, more accustomed to his oratorical vein than to private conference, became now more frank and at ease.

“You said you didn’t know that the idea was from the Lord, Mr. Smith, and I don’t think it is.  I don’t think you’ll entertain it very long, and I don’t think, if you did, many of the Saints would stay in your church.”

She bade him good-day, and went on up the slope.  When she was walking along the brink of the bluff in the open beyond the nut-trees she heard him call.  He came after her with hastened gait, Bible still in hand.  She was surprised to find that what he had to say was very simple, but not the less dignified for that.

“I sometimes think, Sister Halsey, that you look down on us all as if we weren’t good enough for you, although you’re too kindly to let it be seen.  According to the ways of the world, of course, it’s so.  If I’m as rough and uneducated as most of our folks, at least I can think in my mind what it would be not to be rough, and I can think sometimes how it all seems to you.”

His words appealed directly to strong private feeling which had no outlet.  While she stood seeking a reply the natural power that he had of working upon the feelings of others, vulgarly called magnetism, so far worked in connection with his words that tears came to her eyes.

“I don’t often think about my old life,” she said with brief pathos.

Smith was looking at the ground, as a huge, shy boy might stand when anxious to express sympathy of which he was somewhat ashamed.  “I know it must be a sort of abiding trial to you.”  After a moment he added, “I wouldn’t like to make it worse by having you think that I was goin’ to preach any strange doctrine.  I’d sometimes give a good deal if the Lord would raise me up a friend that I could speak to concerning the lights that come to me that I know that it wouldn’t do to speak of in the public congregations, because of their upsetting nature, and likewise because I doubt concerning their meaning.  And of this matter there was no thought in my mind to speak in public, for it is for the future to declare whether it be of the darkness or of the light; but to you I spoke, almost unwittingly, and perhaps in disobedience to the dictates of wisdom.”

He looked at her wistfully.

Susannah leaned her arm upon the topmost log of the snake fence and looked down the slope.  His insight into her own trials caused her to sympathise with him in spite of his absurdity.  She made an honest effort to assist him to self-analysis.  She said, “A great many things come into our minds at times, Mr. Smith, that seem important, but, as you say, if we do not speak about them, afterwards we see that they are silly.  Of course with you, if you think some of your thoughts are revelations,