“I shall,” roared Captain Obadiah, “stand my trial in spite of you all!  I shall live to see you in torments yet!  I shall—­” He gaped and stuttered, but could find no further words with which to convey his infinite rage and disappointed spite.  Then turning, and with a furious gesture, he rushed forth and out of the house, thrusting those aside who stood in his way, and leaving behind him a string of curses fit to set the whole world into a blaze.

He had destroyed all the gaiety of the wedding-breakfast, but the relief from the prodigious doubts and anxieties that had at first overwhelmed those whom he had intended to ruin was of so great a nature that they thought nothing of so inconsiderable a circumstance.

As for our young gentleman, he had come forth from the adventure with such dignity of deportment and with so exalted an air of generous rectitude that those present could not sufficiently admire at the continent discretion of one so young.  The young lady whom he had married, if she had before regarded him as a Paris and an Achilles incorporated into one person, now added the wisdom of a Nestor to the category of his accomplishments.

Captain Obadiah, in spite of the defiance he had fulminated against his enemies, and in spite of the determination he had expressed to remain and to stand his trial, was within a few days known to have suddenly and mysteriously departed from New Hope.  Whether or not he misdoubted his own rectitude too greatly to put it to the test of a trial, or whether the mortification incident upon the failure of his plot was too great for him to support, it was clearly his purpose never to return again.  For within a month the more valuable of his belongings were removed from his great house upon Pig and Sow Point and were loaded upon a bark that came into the harbor for that purpose.  Thence they were transported no one knew whither, for Captain Obadiah was never afterwards observed in those parts.

Nor was the old meeting-house ever again disturbed by such manifestations as had terrified the community for so long a time.  Nevertheless, though the Devil was thus exorcised from his abiding-place, the old church never lost its evil reputation, until it was finally destroyed by fire about ten years after the incidents herein narrated.

In conclusion it is only necessary to say that when the Honorable Frederick Dunburne presented his wife to his noble family at home, he was easily forgiven his mesalliance in view of her extreme beauty and vivacity.  Within a year or two Lord Carrickford, his elder brother, died of excessive dissipation in Florence, where he was then attached to the English Embassy, so that our young gentleman thus became the heir-apparent to his father’s title, and so both branches of the family were united into one.

THE END