The Mormon Prophet. L. Dougall
wrapped herself again in a certain amount of her former reserve, but the excitement that she had been through made her former silence impossible.
Halsey at first received her remarks in silence, then as he essayed to answer, his voice grew low and faint, and a sudden suspicion of the cause pierced through her mind.
In another moment he sank, leaning against her. Putting her hand beneath his coat, she found to her dismay that the strain of holding her had opened his wound; his clothes were again wet with blood.
The reins slipped from his hands. Susannah tied them loose to the front of the chaise and, putting her arms round the fainting man, drew the bandages tightly but with unskilful hands; she lessened the bleeding and caused him such acute pain that he lifted his head and spoke.
"What shall I do?" she asked piteously. The blood, diverted from the brain, had left it without healthy circulation, but she did not know yet that this was affecting his mind.
"Friend," he whispered, "that was in truth no bull; it was the devil himself."
"The devil?" she asked faintly.
"He almost succeeded in his cruel attempt to cause us to be discouraged from the way."
"It seems to me he only succeeded in causing us to take the way with greater vehemence," she replied in some scorn.
In the next minute she heard him whisper eagerly, "Look up; look between the branches; quick! Do you not see the face looking at us?"
The branches of the overhanging tree were black with night. She looked up in the direction that his feeble hand indicated, and with indescribable terror scanned the blank spaces in which no human face could possibly be.
"Look!" he whispered again impatiently. "Don't you see it? It is the face of a man. A white face! It is the face of thy cousin as I saw it yesterday when I was counted worthy to suffer. Look! look! does thou not see him?"
His words had the effect of producing in her that maddening fear of the dark which ghostly tales induce, and now he fainted again. She was afraid to cry for help, afraid even of the rustle of her own garments. She did not know how far she was from any house. And it seemed to her that this lover, who was almost a stranger, was dying in her arms. The misery of this hour governed her action in the next.
Halsey in the bottom of the chaise lay with his head against her knee, and soon, holding the bandages of his wound close upon it with one hand, she took the reins with the other and urged the horse forward. She had had no thought all that day but to go, as Halsey had said, to Emma Smith's protection. She hoped now that there was but one road; that when she came to the first settlement she would be with the Smiths. This was not the case. She travelled an hour, obliged to pass more than one cross-road because she dared not turn down it. At length she found herself in front of a large house with lighted windows, which was evidently an inn.
The door opened, letting out a stream of candlelight. A man stood in the doorway. "What place is this?" cried Susannah's voice from the darkness.
"It's John Biery's hotel."
"Will you have the kindness to tell me if you know of any one called Mr. Joseph Smith?"
There was some talking within. "No, we never heard of Mr. Joseph Smith."
"Or Mr. Oliver Cowdery?" Again there was talking.
"No, it don't seem that we've any of us heard o' those names before. Be you alone?" The deep bass voice of John Biery was becoming more insistent in its rising inflection.
For some half-minute Susannah did not answer, and then fear of being compelled to retake the road made irresolution impossible.
"Indeed, sir, I am not alone. I have in the chaise with me a sick man, and I fear that he may be dying. I thought to find friends, but it seems in the darkness I have missed my way. I must beg of you to assist me to lift him into the house and give us shelter for the night."
The men had remained perfectly still, drinking in her every syllable with that fierce thirst for news which is a first passion of dwellers in such desolate places; then, aroused by what they heard, they came forward across a rough bit of ground to the road. The burly form of John Biery came first, and he called for a lantern, which was instantly produced by one of those who followed. They held it up over Angel's crouching form and death-like face. Then they held it higher and stared at Susannah. Her shawl had fallen from off her shoulders. The handkerchief upon her neck was loose, and underneath the pink border of her bonnet the ringlets had begun to stray. Her resolute face, so young and beautiful, startled them almost as an apparition might have done.
"I'm dead beat," said the hotel-keeper under his breath, "if I ever seed anything like that!" But with the ready suspicion of a prudent householder he questioned her. Where had the man come by the wound? For they saw the blood-stained bandages she clasped.
Yesterday, she explained, he had received a slight bullet-wound by accident, and to-day, in their long travel, the loss of blood had disabled him.
"Does he belong to you, young lady?"
Susannah busied herself with the bandages for a moment, but terror had carried her far. She replied with gentle decision, "He is my husband."
CHAPTER IX.
"It is our fault."
That evening Ephraim Croom stood in his father's sitting-room, near the door of the dark stair that led up to his own rooms. His shoulders were drooping. His face was gray and haggard. Even his hair and beard, damp, unkempt, seemed to express remorse in their outline. He stood doggedly facing his father and mother, repeating the thing that he saw to be true, but with no further words to interpret his insight.
To his parents his opinions, his attitude, appeared as an outrage upon reason. His father looked at him with greater severity than he had ever before exercised upon his only child. "I reckon, Ephraim, that you speak without using the sense that the Almighty has been mercifully pleased to give you. You know, Ephraim, the girl has been as a daughter in this house. When has it been said to her that her father, dying in his worldly follies, left her destitute, the pittance she gets needing to go for his debts? She's had about as good a home as any girl should want, and your mother and the ministers have dealt faithfully with her concerning her soul."
Ephraim made a movement of the head as if for a moment he could have stood upright, feeling in one respect innocent; then again there was nothing but the droop of shame visible.
His mother looked at him with eyes that were red with weeping. She had been wiping them with fierce furtive rubs of her handkerchief; now she was rubbing the handkerchief, a hard ball, in the palm of one hand. Perhaps grief at Susannah's loss had been dominant until Ephraim's accusation had fanned her anger. "She'd better have gone with him openly from the baptising. I never thought then that it was love-making she was after." Deep scorn was here expressed. "Religion! 'Twasn't much religion she had in her mind. And we treated her real kindly, Ephraim, thinking 'twas the hold of delusion they had upon her. 'Twould be very small use to bring her back even if you or your father could have found out which way they'd gone. 'Tisn't likely she'd stay long if you fetched her, seeing she's that sort of a girl, with a hankering for the man. There isn't a place in this house to lock her into unless it is the cellar."
It was perhaps the thought of the unspeakable degradation it would be to the worthy house to hold a girl as prisoner in the cellar, perhaps the dismal knowledge that that which had already befallen them and her was not much better than this, that caused his mother here to lose her self-control entirely and weep bitterly. Ephraim shrank under her words as if they had been the strokes of a whip striking him. When she had ended he went on heavily up the dark stair.
Both the men were in riding-dress. The elder man, when he had comforted his wife as best he might, laid aside his boots and whip determinedly, believing that the use for them, as far as concerned the search for