It was ten o'clock. Two more hours! He had tried to suppress his excitement, his apprehensions, his eagerness, but now as he went back into the darkness of the forest they burst out anew. What if Marion should not keep the tryst? He thought of the spies whom Neil had said guarded the girl's home--and of Obadiah. Could he trust the old councilor? Should he confide his plot to him and ask his assistance? As the minutes passed and these thoughts recurred again and again in his brain he could not keep the nervousness from growing within him. He was sure now that he would have to fight his battle without Neil. He saw the necessity of coolness, of judgment, and he began to demand these things of himself, struggling sternly against those symptoms of weakness which had replaced his confidence of a short time before. Gradually he fought himself back into his old faith. He would save Marion--without Neil, without Obadiah. If Marion did not come to him by midnight it would be because of the guards against whom Neil had warned him, and he would go to her. In some way he would get her to the boat, even if he had to fight his way through Arbor Croche's men. With this return of confidence Nathaniel's thoughts reverted to his present greatest need, which was food. Since early morning he had eaten nothing and he began to feel the physical want in a craving that was becoming acutely uncomfortable. If Obadiah had not returned to his home he made up his mind that he would find entrance to the cabin and help himself. A sudden turn in the path which he was following, however, revealed one of the councilor's windows aglow with light, and as he pressed quietly around the end of the building the sound of a low voice came to him through the open door. Cautiously he approached and peered in. A large oil lamp, the light of which he had seen in the window, was burning on a table in the big room but the voice came from the little closet into which Obadiah had taken him the preceding night. For several minutes he crouched and listened. He heard the chuckling laugh of the old councilor--and then an incoherent raving that set his blood tingling. There is a horror in the sound of madness, a horror that creeps to the very pit of one's soul, that sends shivering dread from every nerve center, that causes one who is alone with it to sweat with a nameless fear. It was the voice of madness that came from that little room. Before it Nathaniel quailed as if a clammy hand had reached out from the darkness and gripped him by the throat. He drew back shivering in every limb, and the voice followed him, shrieking now in a sudden burst of insane mirth and dying away a moment later in a hollow cackling laugh that seemed to curdle the blood in his veins. Mad! Obadiah Price was mad! Step by step Nathaniel fell back from the door. He felt himself trembling from head to foot. His heart thumped within his breast like the beating of a hammer. For an instant there was silence--a silence in