“Dear heart, thou knowest well that there is no goodness but that which comes from above, and although this Mr. Finney may have a show of goodness, as thou or I might have in his place, yet what avail can his preaching be if God be not with him?  So what show of goodness he has only aideth the devil; for how can it be possible, when two armies are encamped one against another, that God can fight upon both sides?  Is Christ divided?”

A loud knock came to the outer door; Elder Halsey was late in getting to his work; men were waiting for him.  He let the sound of the raps die away before he answered them; his searching look was upon her face, hungering for some assurance that his words had met and slain her doubts.  Then he was forced to leave her.

It was easy for Susannah to obtain a horse to go to the village of Hiram.  When the day of Finney’s preaching came, after her husband had gone to his afternoon work, she rode out of Kirtland.

Since she had made up her mind to disobey she had said nothing further to Angel.  Why inflict upon him the painful attempt to hinder her which his conscience would demand?

The last snow-wreath had faded, but there was not as yet a bud or blade of perfect green.  The valley of the Chagrin lay almost hueless in the cold sunshine.  A light wind was blowing over its levels of standing weeds, and whispering in the bare arms of the huge nut-trees upon its bluffs.

When the sun began to sink, Susannah had reached the low rolling ground that surrounds Hiram.  The landscape here had a less distinctive character, and there was no vapour in the sky to make the sunset beautiful.  She was weary of her horse’s rough trot, and still more so of its slow plodding, but she felt excitement.  She had conquered those forces, part of her womanhood, which urged compliance with her husband’s desire and her own desire to abide by the homely routine whatever it might be.  The thing that she had done seemed so large that her imagination told her that the event must justify it.

She had no thought of concealment.  She knew only the two families in the village of Hiram.  Her plan was to go first to the Rigdons and ask for refreshment, thence to the meeting, and after that to ask for the night’s lodging which she knew that Emma Smith would not refuse.

In the village she saw that people were moving about and talking with an air of excitement.  When she turned to a quiet corner and asked an elderly man for Mrs. Rigdon’s house, he stared at her as if at an apparition.

“Is it Sydney Rigdon’s wife that you’re wanting?”

Susannah had raised her veil, and he looked at her face with the greatest curiosity.  Flushed with exercise, braced by the sharp air, her colour was brilliant and her eyes sparkling.  Her plain dress and heavy veil appeared to the man to be a disguise, so surprising to him was the brilliancy of her face and the modulation of her voice.