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Updated: June 15, 2025
For a few moments he stood in silent, listening inaction, his nerves tingling with a strange sensation of impending peril. Obadiah's madness, the mysterious trembling of the earth beneath his feet, the volcano of fire, the clanging of the bell and the councilor's insane rejoicing had all come so suddenly that he was dazed.
Obadiah's vague suggestions, the scene in the king's room, the night visits of the girl to the councilor's cabin and last of all this incident at the jail flashed upon him now with another meaning, with a significance that slowly cooled the enthusiasm in his veins.
He bent over Obadiah's shriveled form and spoke the girl's name again and again in his ears. There came no response, no quiver of life to show that the old man was conscious of his presence. As he worked over him, bathing his face and chest in cool water, the feeling became strong in him that he was fighting death in this gloomy room for Marion's sake.
His sheriffs watched them night and day. He named the hour of their doom unless Marion yielded to him. And to save them, her supposed parents to keep the terrible knowledge of their crime from Neil Marion was going to sacrifice herself when " Again he stopped. His breath was coming more faintly. "I understand," whispered Nathaniel. "I understand " Obadiah's dimming eyes gazed at him steadily.
It was like the whispering of an invisible spirit in his ears something more than presentiment, something that made his own heart grow faint when death seemed winning in the struggle. His watchfulness was acute, intense, desperate. When, after a time, he straightened himself again, rewarded by Obadiah's more regular breathing, the sweat stood in beads upon his face. He knew that he had triumphed.
And once there, a half a mile or a mile away, he would tell her that he had lied to her; and he would give her his heart to trample upon to prove the love that had made him do this thing, and then he would row her to the mainland. It was the sight of Obadiah's cabin that brought his caution back. He came upon it so suddenly that an exclamation of surprise fell unguarded from his lips.
He coughed and blood flecked his lips. "She left Marion and Neil!" He sank back, ashen white and still, and with a cry Nathaniel turned to the lieutenant. The officer ran forward with a flask in his hand. "Give him this!" The touch of liquor to Obadiah's lips revived him. He whispered weakly. "The children, Nat I tried to find them and years after I did in Nauvoo.
'Twas a most inauspicious journey; my father having had every foot of it to travel over again, and his calculation to begin afresh, when he had almost got to the end of it, by Obadiah's opening the door to acquaint him the family was out of yeast and to ask whether he might not take the great coach-horse early in the morning and ride in search of some.
Nathaniel had dropped his companion's hand, and now Neil walked to the log and sat down with his face turned in the direction from which their pursuers must come if they entered the swamp. Suddenly the memory of Obadiah's note shot into Nathaniel's head, the councilor's admonition, his allusion to a visitor.
He heard Marion cry out his name, but his fighting blood was stirred and he did not stop. Obadiah had given up his life for him, for Marion, and he was mad with a desire to wreak vengeance upon the murderers. The first man lay where he had fallen, with Obadiah's bullet through his back. The other two fired again as Nathaniel rushed down upon them.
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