She did not know whether she had thrown them into the grave with her treasure, or whether they were left a prey to fire and theft, but in her heart she had carried them beyond the loss of their material existence.
The first had answered her insistent question concerning the vexed condition of the devotees of prayer.

It contained no word of criticism of the Mormon creed, nothing that if read aloud could have disturbed Halsey's peace.

"Perchance," he had said, "as a medical man applies a poultice or blister to a diseased body to draw out the evil, so to those who pray and are too ignorant, _i.e._ opinionated, to follow perfectly the greatest teacher of prayer, God may apply circumstances to bring all the evil of heart to the surface, that in this life and the future it may the more quickly work itself away." Susannah had so conned this passage that she could now close her eyes and read it as written upon the red dusk of their lids.
The next letter had been written a year later.

He described a great change in his life.

He had gone to spend the winter in Hartford, on the Connecticut River, to be under a new physician, and had there met with a preacher called Mr.Horace Bushnell.