The boy lay in rosy sleep, a woman of the inn keeping a kindly eye upon him.  Probably nothing but a mother’s love could have fancied him of sufficient importance to attract public attention, but Susannah, locking her door, knelt by the bed, and spreading protecting arms above him, listened with strained senses for news of Halsey’s injury or death.  For years she had feared that the violence she had seen wreaked upon others would touch her husband; violence offered to herself would have seemed a trivial grief in comparison.  The fear that has long harped upon sore nerves has a cumulative action upon the pain of its realisation.

Susannah found herself giving forth short ejaculatory whispers of prayer upon the close air of the plain, small room in which she knelt.  It was such prayer only as we come at by inheritance, prayer that is one of the habits by which the fittest have survived.

Before two hours were past Halsey had returned.  He was bruised and much shaken, but appeared unconscious of injury, and made light of it.  The open fight had ended with no decisive victory for either party; the chief result appeared to be that malice on either side was for the hour exhausted.  Whether because of this or because Halsey gave himself to prayer on behalf of his brethren, the polls were opened quietly at noon and the Mormons voted with the other citizens.

In the cool of the evening Susannah was sitting beside her husband holding the sleeping child.  The window of their humble room was open, not to any broad, fair landscape such as their eyes were accustomed to feast upon, but upon the yard of the small tavern.  There is, however, in new countries no crowding; space, like air and sunshine, is the common heritage.  Grass grew round the edges of the large yard, and an old white horse was cropping it contentedly.  A cool air was blowing, and over the wooden roofs of the town stars were beginning to gather themselves from out the pale dusk.  An old negro and two mulatto boys were sitting upon a log at the side of one of the sheds, quarrelling and singing slave melodies by turns.

Angel took the hand of the sleeping child and Susannah’s hand and folded them in his own.  “Susannah, it has been given to me to see this afternoon more clearly than ever before the material triumph of our people.  They will rear high cities; they will lead armies; they will command wealth; but it has also been shown me that Zion will not be, as I had heretofore believed, pure from sin, for evil has already entered into her.  Because she has taken the sword her spiritual warfare will not be soon accomplished; the wheat and the tares shall grow together, and I do not yet see the end.”

There was a pause.  Susannah watched the slaves taking their evening ease so light-heartedly.  She looked down at the three hands which Angel had gathered together.  The dusk was beginning to make all things indistinct.