CHAPTER VII.


How much better humanity might have been had we been at the world's
making we cannot tell, but as it is, the Creator knows that a woman
whose veins are pulsing with youth does not know, as she stands between
her lovers, how far influences not born of reason are affecting her
understanding. Ephraim remained neglectful, and Susannah remembered with
more and more distinct compassion Halsey's wistful face and the touch of
his trembling hand. But the emotion which is deeper than human love was
also in ferment. The shock which she had received, aided by the pressure
at home, had effectually worked religious unrest. She was certain now
that she must do some new thing to obtain peace with God. Long
monotonous days ripened within her this altered mind.

On one of the warm days that fell at the end of the apple harvest, when
such vagrant labourers as had collected to help the farmers were
loitering at liberty, Smith held his first and last public meeting in
the place where his boyhood had been passed. It was near the cross-roads
on the old highroad to Palmyra, where a small wooden bridge carries
over a creek that runs through the meadow to the Canandaigua. Here in
the leisure time of the afternoon Smith lifted up his voice and preached
to an ever-increasing crowd, composed first of men, and added to by
whole families from most of those houses within touch of the village.

The elder Croom, his wife, and Susannah were returning from the weekly
shopping at Palmyra's store; they came upon the crowd, and stopped
perforce. Wrath was upon the faces of the elder couple, and nothing less