“I’ve been hoping that he’d give grace to our sister Susannah, for she’s been writing a letter to say as how she was without faith and wanting to leave us.”

Smith answered him now only with a cool silence that puzzled his coarser understanding.

“’Twas in our first days here, when a good many of the women were flighty, and Elvira Halsey, she was ill enough to have worked the patience out of any one as they work the milk out of butter, and Sister Susannah came with a letter.  She gave it to me unsealed.”

“Was she without wax to seal it?” interrupted Smith in a casual tone.  Darling could not know that the thought of such poverty wrung Smith’s heart.

“Waal, I dunno” (which was a lie).  “Mebbe she had no wax—­I didn’t think of that, but anyhow she gave me the letter.  ’Twas too late for the mail; ‘twas too heavy for one stamp.  An’ I didn’t like to tell her, poor thing, that we’d mighty little to spend on stamps.  So after she’d gone I just had a look to see who it was to.”

“The address would be on the outside?” Smith rose, hat in hand, as if to depart, but fixed his eyes on the candle till Darling should have done.

“The name gave me very little hint as to whether the matter was worth the two stamps, so I just had a glance inside.  Thought it might be but a line asking money of her friends, which, under the sad circumstances, of course I knew you’d rather the Church would supply.”

This drew the first spark of the approval he was expecting.  “Certainly, certainly, the widows and the orphans of those who have perished for the truth must ever be our most tender care.”

“Exactly so, prophet; I knew that would be your opinion; so when I saw that our sister had felt drove to asking for money from some fellow—­I guess there must have been some sweethearting between him and her before she married Halsey.  She said in this letter that she’d go to him if he’d send her cash.  She said as how she thought the religion of the Latter-Day Saints was a lie; but of course I could see it was not her right judgment, that she was awful lonesome.”

“It was taking a great liberty, Mr. Darling.”  Smith tapped his stick upon the floor.  He was far more angry than he showed, for policy had laid a soft hand of reminder on his shoulder.  “Our sister, Mrs. Halsey, is not—­” he coughed slightly, and sought by prophetical phrases to explain that Susannah was not upon the level of Darling and his kind—­“is not, as it would be said in the Scriptures, among those who deck themselves with crisping pins or are busybodies, but she is as that lady to whom John wrote (and the letter is preserved unto the edification of the Church unto this day); for it was revealed unto me in the beginning that she was the elect sister, and to sit as one who judges—­as one who judges Israel.”  He was just going to add in the flow of his phrases “upon twelve thrones,” but the words died because even he perceived the lack of sense.