Before Smith had dipped him in the stream and blessed him another man came forward, pale and thin, with a hectic flush upon his cheeks.

He was a well-known resident of Manchester; all knew that his days on earth must be few.

A low howl began to rise, loudest on the outskirts of the crowd, but the fact that the man was dying kept many silent, feeling that the doomed may surely have their own will.
Before Joseph Smith had spoken his benediction over this trembling, gasping creature, when Halsey had left his kneeling to spring forward and lead him to the shore, Susannah began to move forward to the water.
No one who saw her move at first dreamed of what she sought.

Her aunt had pushed on some distance farther and stood waiting, almost too astonished at this last baptism to notice that she was separated from her charge.

Now, when she saw Susannah pushing forward, she only wondered with others what she would be at, and spoke to her ineffectually, without the shriek and struggle which she made when the girl was beyond her reach.
So Susannah, moving like one in an agonised dream, came to the edge of the pool.