"I guess I'm sorry enough, but I don't know whether it's repentance, for I thought I'd done all just what the Lord told me to do, but at times like these I'm not so sure of the revelations I hear in my soul, but I know I thought I was right at the time; but as for being sorry, if ye had the burden of all these children of Israel in the desert on your heart, knowing that ye had brought them into the desert, and brought the hunger and the thirst and the pestilence and the enemy upon them, and weren't quite sure at times whether the thing that ye saw leading was the Lord's pillar of cloud or the devil's, and if ye was now being cast out before the face of men and called a liar and a swindler, and without a dollar in the world, I guess ye'd know what it felt like to feel sorry." The room was a long one; in the fore part the glow from the hearth made clear the baby's cradle, the table set for Halsey's supper, the close shutters of the front windows, but the red flame rays were fainter as they came into this back portion where Susannah stood in dull distress a few paces from the stricken intruder. This man had always the power at close quarters of producing strange disturbance in the emotions of his friends. Susannah was trembling, her heart heaving, if not with pure compassion, at least with wild excitement on his account. With an effort Smith held himself still, but gave again the heart-broken laugh that appealed more than all else to her woman's heart. "'Tain't all that neither, that makes me the most 'sorry,' as ye call it. I tried to go in and out before this people, Mrs. Halsey, loving and serving all alike as a prophet should, but I wouldn't be human man, no, nor fit to be chosen by God for the honour he's put upon me, if I didn't know who amongst us was most worth care and respect, and it's come to my soul this night, now that I can't no longer stand between you and all the dangers that beset our people in the wilderness, that I wasn't right, maybe, to egg on Halsey to take ye away from your happy home, or to make a point as I did, first off, of getting ye converted--for I was more set on it than I showed at the time. It's because 'twas my doing you married, that I've come to say this; and I see well enough that 'tain't love that is between you and Halsey, though you are too tender of him to let him see." She made a movement of the head, an effort to show reproving dignity, while in fact taken by surprise, her nerves in distressful panic, she had scarce the power to control herself, none to control him.