Two days after, when Susannah and her husband were returning from Smith's preaching through the autumn night, they were met as they were approaching Biery's hotel by a messenger from Knight's house. The messenger had been sent to fetch Halsey. He reported that Newell Knight was in "an awful way." Susannah alighted at once and walked to the tavern, in order that her husband might drive with all speed to the afflicted man.
The lights as they shone from John Biery's windows reminded her vividly of the first time, a month since, when she had driven to that house at night. She had grown much older since then, stronger in many ways, weaker in some, but she was not conscious of this; it was not her way to give even so much as a passing glance at herself as one of the actors in life's drama. The road on which she trod was heavy with mud. The night-winds cried around and through the empty branches of two or three neglected trees in the clearing. The square wooden tavern stood at the cross-roads. The light from the door made a pathway through the darkness, up which Susannah walked.
When she entered, the heat and fumes from fire, candles, tobacco-pipes, and steaming mugs met her. She was accustomed to walking through John Biery's main room to gain the stair that led to her own; on the whole it was not disorderly, or Susannah had but to appear on the threshold to reduce it to order. To-night the men did not let her pass with their usual civil "Good evening"; they assumed that she had an interest in their talk.
"Is Mr. Halsey stopping over to Farmer Knight's?" asked Biery. "My! and they'll be real glad to get him, ye know. Twiced they've been here fur him. They say that Newell Knight he's possessed with a devil."
Susannah wrapped her shawl tightly across her breast, a nervous movement caused not by cold but by the desire to withdraw her real self from the surrounding circumstance.
A tall thin man sitting by the table set down his mug with a clatter upon it. "Wall now, tain't my idea thet thet's exectly what's taken Newell. I saw a case of a man thet was taken under the preacher Finney. 'Twas over to Ithica. The hull town knew about it. A lot of folks went in. I jest looked in when I was passing, and seen the man meself. He was lyin' on the floor. His wife was aholdin' his head, but he didn't know her. He hedn't no knowledge of any of the folks. He jest lay there rollin', and his eyes was rollin'. And when Finney was fetched, Finney he said 'twas 'conviction.' I don't know what the man was convicted of, but 'twas 'conviction' Finney called it. He didn't say nothing about being possessed with devils."
The third speaker was a small fat man. His face was smooth and had the peculiar boylike appearance that chubbiness gives even to the middle-aged; he had bright black eyes, and before he spoke he glanced at Susannah critically.
"When they're taken that way under Finney," he said, as if meditating, "'conviction' commonly means conviction of sins—their own sins, ye know, not other folk's; and when they git up, if they've taken anything wrongfully they hev to restore it fourfold afore the conviction will leave off a-worrittin' them. I don't know how 'tis among the Mormons." The last words were said in an undertone and he had dropped his eyes. It would have required a brave man to treat Susannah to open sarcasm.
She stood looking from one to the other. She still wore her girlish cottage bonnet, and as its fashion was, it had slipped backwards upon the amber ringlets that hung upon her neck; but the girlish look was fast passing from the face, the hair parting fell on either side of pale cheeks.
"Oh, as to thet, 's fur as I know, one religion's as good as another," said the politic Biery.