“There will be no chance to-night, Nat—­but to-morrow night, or the next.  O, I promise you shall meet her, and make love to her, Nat!  Ho, if Strang knew, if Strang only knew!”

There was something so fiendishly gloating in the councilor’s attitude, in his face, in the hot glow of his eyes, that for a moment Nathaniel’s involuntary liking for the little old man before him turned to abhorrence.  The passion, the triumph of the man, convinced him where words had failed.  The girl was Strang’s wife.  His last doubt was dispelled.  And because she was Strang’s wife Obadiah hated the Mormon prophet.  The councilor had spoken with fateful assurance—­that he should meet her, that he should make love to her.  It was an assurance that made him shudder.  As he followed in silence up out of the gloom of the town he strove, but in vain, to find whether sin had lurked in the sweet face that had appealed to him in its misery—­whether there had been a flash of something besides terror, besides prayerful entreaty, in the lovely eyes that had met his own.  Obadiah spoke no word to break in on his thoughts.  Now and then the old man’s insane chucklings floated softly to Nathaniel’s ears, and when at last they came to the cabin in the forest he broke into a low laugh that echoed weirdly in the great black room which they entered.  He lighted another candle and approached a ladder which led through a trap in the ceiling.  Without a word he mounted this ladder, and Nathaniel followed him, finding himself a moment later in a small low room furnished with a bed.  The councilor placed his candle on a table close beside it and rubbed his hands until it seemed they must burn.

“You will stay—­eh, Nat?” he cried, bobbing his head.  “Yes, you will stay, and you will give me back the package for a day or two.”  He retreated to the trap and slid down it as quickly as a rat.  “Pleasant dreams to you, Nat, and—­O, wait a minute!” Captain Plum could hear him pattering quickly over the floor below.  In a moment he was back, thrusting his white grimacing face through the trap and tossed something upon the bed.  “She left them last night, Nat.  Pleasant dreams, pleasant dreams,” and he was gone.

Nathaniel turned to the bed and picked up a faded bunch of lilacs.  Then he sat down, loaded his pipe, and smoked until he could hardly see the walls of his little room.  From the moment of his landing on the island he turned the events of the day over in his mind.  Yet when he arrived at the end of them he was no less mystified than when he began.  Who was Obadiah Price?  Who was the girl that fate had so mysteriously associated with his movements thus far?  What was the plot in which he had accidentally become involved?  With tireless tenacity he hung to these questions for hours.  That there was a plot of some kind he had not the least doubt.  The councilor’s strange actions, the oath, the package, and above all the scene in the king’s house convinced him of that.  And he was sure that Obadiah’s night visitor—­the girl with the lilacs—­was playing a vital part in it.