For a moment Susannah felt impelled to follow his example. "But perhaps," she thought to herself, "cold water upon the patient's head, or a warm foot-bath—" Such suggestions caused her to resist the impulse to join the praying band, and, having resisted it, she suddenly experienced, as one feels a fresh breeze entering a close room, a strong, clear sense of knowledge that in this matter, at least, her husband was deluded, that the friends had better rise from their knees and betake themselves to ruder remedies.
Susannah had never learned to command; she had never even learned to advise. She had too much reverence to speak aloud, disturbing those who were at prayer. She stood hesitating, and then, in very low tones, whispered her belief in her husband's ear.
No doubt Halsey was shocked at his wife's unbelief; perhaps by the law of telepathy, for whose existence some psychical experts vouch, his thought penetrated the mind of the sensitive upon the bed. Whatever the cause, Newell Knight sat up and pointed at Susannah, crying aloud that he saw the devil about to seize upon her. So excited was the mental atmosphere, so vivid were the sufferer's words and the effect of his pointing finger, or, perhaps, so substantial was his vision, that more than one of the saints afterwards averred that they had seen the Evil One about to embrace Susannah. But they did not agree in the description of his form.
Halsey wrapped his arms about his wife, and led her like a child from the room and from the house. She hardly had time to speak before she saw the night again about her. He set her down upon an old log that chanced to lie against Knight's barn, kneeling beside her. There, when they were alone in the darkness, he invoked that name to which throughout all Christendom the devils are believed to be subject.
"Angel," she said gently, "stop praying and listen to me. If you can command the devil in the name of our Lord, why don't you do that to poor Newell Knight?" She felt strong sympathy for the young man; she was moved almost to tears to think they were taking the wrong way with him.
"I have tried and failed. We have sent for Joseph Smith. My faith is not strong enough," he added humbly. "This cometh not forth but by prayer and by fasting. Look! I am even now unfaithful to my charge because I love thee, friend, more, I fear, than the work of the Lord."
They were left alone because Halsey in passing out had left the door of the sick room open to the eager neighbours. Now reluctantly he went back to his task of guarding the patient, and Susannah, after assuring his anxious soul that she felt no ill effects whatever from the dire proximity, went home again across the dark frozen fields with her lantern. She sat half the night watching and waiting.
It was in the darkest hour before the dawn that she heard Halsey's step and crept down through the black house to unlock the door for him. When they had come again into the room she saw that he was greatly excited, filled with apparent calm of an exalted mood.
"We have beheld a most glorious victory, friend; and truly we have been shown signs and wonders, and a very great miracle has been wrought. I wish thou couldst have seen with thine own eyes, and yet—"
She thought that he had been going to say that her lack of faith had made it more expedient for her to be away, but that he had checked in himself even the thought that he was more worthy of privilege than she.