The Danite turned to Susannah.  “I guess, ma’am, neither you nor I have got any business to take us back, and there’s enough of the brothers here to do the work.”

Susannah went on with the young man through hour after hour of the afternoon farther and farther into the unknown fastnesses of the wood.  They left behind them the low thicket of second growth, and penetrated into an uncleared Missouri forest.

CHAPTER XII.

All the powers of the young Danite were strung by excitement into the fiercest vitality, and he thought that physical fatigue was the best medicine for Susannah’s mind.  Why he had accepted the work of saving her as part of his mission of Mormon defence he did not ask himself.  In him, as in many athletes, thought and action seemed one.  He acted because he acted; he knew no other reason.

In the middle of the night Susannah woke up.  The stars glimmered above the trees; she was lying on a heap of autumn leaves wrapped in the blanket.  Sitting up, she remembered slowly the events of the preceding day.

Her movement had caused another movement at some distance.  The Danite, sleeping on the alert like soldier or huntsman, was roused by the first sound she made, and when she continued to sit up he came near in the glimmering light.  She saw his dark form where he tarried a few paces away.

“You’re all safe, ma’am.  Can’t you go on sleeping?”

A watch of the night often brings to recollection some duty forgotten during the day.  “Do you know where Elvira Halsey is?”

“The young lady with the brown eyes that I have sometimes seen you with, ma’am?”

“Yes.”  Then Susannah added with the weak detail of a wretched mind, “She isn’t very young.”

“Was she any relation to you, ma’am?  Were you very affectionate with her?”

Susannah explained the relationship.

The Danite thought, “If I tell her she’s there she’ll think it her duty to trapse back all the way to find her; she’s that sort.”  Therefore, judging that a minor grief could not make much difference, he gave it as his opinion that Elvira was dead.  At this Susannah shed tears for the first time, which eased his anxiety not a little.

Susannah did not know the Danite’s name; it never occurred to her to ask him any question about himself.

At dawn they started again upon their tramp.  The man knew the country, and when the sun was up he brought Susannah out of the forest to a settler’s farm.  She was faint now for want of food, walking again, as she had walked last night, with vacant eyes and dull mechanical tread.

The Danite made her sit down upon a stone near the house, and brought a woman to her who carried bread and milk.  Susannah ate and drank without speaking.

“My! but she’s tired,” said the farmer’s wife.  “It’s a cruel shame to make her walk so far; you’re not a good husband to her, I’m thinking.”