In speaking of the future he did not gloss over the persecution; he did not even promise, as Smith had done, a sure and material reward.  The mind of the young Quaker convert was fixed upon the things that are unseen.  This was not hidden from the girl.  The thought of being with him in his faith and resignation gave her peace.  Poverty and persecution seemed as nothing compared with the torture of being surrounded by people whose thought and actions aroused in her young heart whirlwinds of passionate opposition.  Even Ephraim, instead of rising in his strength to condemn the outrage of yesterday, had attempted to-day to wound or kill.  Her amazement and dismay at this drove her out as it were with a scourge.

Halsey had told her to pray, and she had tried to pray.  Halsey had told her to search the Scriptures for guidance, and she read.  Text after text came home to her heart, bidding her leave her kindred to share the fortunes of the persecuted children of faith.

CHAPTER VIII.

At break of day Halsey was waiting upon the road with a fairly good horse and a comfortable chaise.  Susannah never forgot the light that came to his eyes when he saw her approach; it was like dawn in paradise.

Angel Halsey was not without shrewd worldly wisdom.  He turned into a cross corduroy road that led through the woods, passing only some small clearings to the west of Palmyra, and thus by a detour avoiding that village, he returned again to the highroad between Canandaigua and Geneva.  The pursuers, upon failing to hear that the chaise had passed through Palmyra, might turn back, or if they had gone on they might have outstripped them on the road, and be in front rather than behind.  This danger peopled the long lonely road with possible enemies both before and behind.  The strain upon the imagination was very great.  The road was heavy and rough.

Susannah perceived that Halsey’s apprehension of being overtaken was almost solely on her account.  He was so upborne by his religious enthusiasm as to be oblivious to the pain which his wound of yesterday gave him, and was perfectly willing to encounter the violence of her kindred again if need be, yet, seeing her terror with a quickness of sympathy which roused her gratitude, he took every possible precaution that could allay her fears.  All through the weary, weary day she hardly spoke to him, never addressed him by name.

They reached the new town of Geneva at sundown.  When they had set forth again, it was a great comfort to Susannah that grayness had succeeded to sunshine.  She was weary of the yellow light, of the dull glare from the stubble fields, of the obtrusive colours of the autumn foliage, of the blueness of the sky, of everything, indeed, that she had seen and heard during the wretched hours of the day.  They now travelled through a very flat tract; little of the land was cleared; the road was straight.  It is hard to explain the mental weariness produced by a straight level road.  The hope and interest inspired by undulations or curves are lost.  The distance ever gives a farther reach of the weary way to the view, as if by a parable it would impress on the traveller the knowledge that the future was to be barren of delight.