Some four or five leaders in the Church, with their families and friends, had charged Smith with hypocrisy and fraud.
It was not Susannah's own opinion that such a charge could be maintained.

Smith appeared to her to be like a child playing among awful forces--clever enough often to control them, to the amazement of himself and others, but never comprehending the force he used; often naughty; on the whole a well-intentioned child.

But she could well see that childishness combined with power is a more difficult conception for the common mind than rank hypocrisy.
Angel had been assisting in a solemn excommunication of the apostates.
He looked upon them as having been overcome by the devil.
After this Halsey instituted a series of unusual meetings for prayer and revival preaching, which he held after the ordinary evening classes in the School of the Prophets, which was now removed to the upper chambers of the finished temple.

Now, as at other times, his preaching was successful.

His power was with men rather than with women; they gathered in excited crowds, and their prayer and praise went up in the midnight hour.
Susannah was not in the habit of going to bed till her husband returned.
One night, after twelve had struck, while she sat warming the dimpled feet of her restless babe at the rosy fire-light, she was greatly astonished to hear a tapping, low but distinct, on a window that opened to the back of the house.