e commandments of the
kingdom. That was last night--when you saw her through the window.
Strang is madly infatuated with her beauty and yet he dares to go to any
length without fear of losing her. She has become his slave. She is as
completely in his power as though bound in iron chains. And the most
terrible thing about it all is that she has constantly urged me to leave
the island--to go, and never return. Great God, what does it all mean? I
love her more than anything else on earth, we have been inseparable
since the day she was old enough to toddle alone--and yet she would have
me leave her! No power on earth can reveal the secret that is torturing
her. No power can make Strang divulge it."

"And Obadiah Price!" cried Nathaniel, sudden excitement flashing in his
eyes. "Does he not know?"

"I believe that he does!" replied Neil, pacing back and forth in his
agitation. "Captain Plum, if there is a man on this island who loves
Marion with all of a father's devotion it is Obadiah Price, and yet he
swears that he knows nothing of the terrible influence which has so
suddenly enslaved her to the prophet! He suggests that it may be
mesmerism, but I--" He interrupted himself with a harsh, mirthless
laugh. "Mesmerism be damned! It's not that!"

"Your sister--is--a Mormon," ventured Nathaniel, remembering what the
prophet had said to him that morning. "Could it be her faith?--a
message revealed through Strang from--"

Neil stopped him almost fiercely.

"Marion is not a Mormon!" he said. "She hates Mormonism as she hates
Strang. I have tried to get her to leave the island with me but she
insists on staying because of the old folk. They are very old, Captain
Plum, and they believe in the prophet and his Heaven as you and I
believe in that blue sky up there. The day before I was arrested I
begged my sister to flee to the mainland with me but she refused with
the words that she had said to me a hundred times before--'Neil, I must
marry the prophet!' Don't you see there is nothing to do--but to kill
Strang?"

Nathaniel thrust his hand into a pocket of the coat he had loaned to
Neil and drew forth his pipe and tobacco pouch. As he loaded the pipe he
looked squarely into the other's eyes and smiled.

"Neil," he said softly. "Do you know that you would have made an awful
fool of yourself if I hadn't hove in sight just when I did?"

He lighted his pipe with exasperating coolness, still smiling over its
bowl.

"You are not g