Neil gazed at him in astonishment.

“Obadiah told—­you—­nothing?” he asked incredulously.

“Not a word about you or Marion except that Marion was the king’s seventh wife.  But he hinted at many things and kept me on the trail, always expecting, always watching, and yet every hour was one of mystery.  I am in the darkest of it at this instant.  What does it all mean?  Why are you going to kill Strang?  Why—­”

Neil interrupted him with a cry so poignant in its wretchedness that the last question died upon his lips.

“I thought that the councilor had told you all,” he said.  “I thought you knew.”  The disappointment in his voice was almost despair.  “Then—­it was only accidentally—­you helped us?”

“Only accidentally that I helped you—­yes!  But Marion—­” Nathaniel crushed Neil’s hand in both his own and his eyes betrayed more than he would have said.  “I’ve got an armed ship and a dozen men out there and if I can help Marion by blowing up St. James—­I’ll do it!”

For a time only the tense breathing of the two broke the silence of their lips.  They looked into each other’s face, Nathaniel with all the eagerness of the passion with which Marion had stirred his soul, Neil half doubting, as if he were trying to find in this man’s eyes the friendship which he had not questioned a few minutes before.

“Obadiah told you nothing?” he asked again, as if still unbelieving.

“Nothing.”

“And you have not seen Marion—­to talk with her?”

“No.”

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.  With this memory there recurred to him Obadiah’s words at the temple, “If you had remained at the cabin, Nat, you would have known that I was your friend.  She would have come to you, but now—­it is impossible.”  For the first time the truth began to dawn upon him.  He went and sat down beside Neil.

“I am beginning to understand—­a little,” he said.  “Obadiah had planned that I should meet Marion, but I was a fool and spoiled his scheme.  If I had done as he told me I should have seen her this morning.”

In a few words he reviewed the events of the preceding evening and of that morning—­of his coming to the island, his meeting with Obadiah, and of the singular way in which he had become interested in Marion.  He omitted the oaths but told of Winnsome’s warning and of his interview with the Mormon king.  When he spoke of the girl as he had seen her through the king’s window, and of her appealing face turned to him at the jail, his voice trembled with an excitement that deepened the flush in Neil’s cheeks.

“Captain Plum, I thank God that you like Marion,” he said simply.  “After I kill Strang will you help her?”