Mechanically, rather than with reason, he went to the fifth and last door.  His candle had become extinguished in his haste and after he had opened the door he stopped at the threshold of the black hall to light it again.  There was a moment’s pause as he searched his pockets for a match, a silence in which he listened as he searched, and suddenly as he was about to strike the sulphur tipped splint there came to his ears a sound that held him chained to the spot.  It was the sobbing of a woman; or was it a child?  In a moment he knew that it was a woman; and then the sobbing ceased.

There was nothing but darkness ahead of him; no ray of light shone under the door; the chamber itself was in utter gloom.  As quietly as possible he relighted his candle.  A glance assured him that this hall was different from the others; it was deeper, and there were two doors at the end of it instead of one.  Through which of these doors had come the sound of sobbing he had heard?

He approached and listened.  Each moment added to his excitement, his fears, his hopes, but at last he opened the door on the left.  The room was empty; there was the same disorder as before; the same signs of hurried flight.  It was the room on the right!  His heart almost stopped its beating as he placed his hand on the latch, lifted it, and pushed the door in.  Kneeling beside the bed he saw a woman.  She had turned toward the light and in the dim illumination of the room Nathaniel recognized the beautiful face he had seen at the king’s castle the preceding day—­the face of the woman who had sent him to find the prophet, who had placed her gentle hand on Marion’s head as he had looked through the window.  There was no fear in her eyes as she saw Nathaniel.  Something more terrible than that shone in their glorious depths as she rose to her feet and stood before him, her face lined with grief, her mouth twitching in agony.  She stood with clenched hands, her bosom rising and falling in the passion of the storm within her; and she sobbed even as Nathaniel paused there, unmanned in this sudden presence of a distress greater than his own; sobbed in a choking, tearless way, waiting for him to speak.

“Forgive me,” he spoke gently.  “I have come—­for—­Marion.”  He felt that he had no reason to lie to this woman.  His face betrayed his own anguish as he came nearer to her.  “I want Marion,” he repeated.  “My God, won’t you tell me—?”

She struggled to calm herself as he spoke the girl’s name.

“Marion is not here,” she said.  She crushed his hands against her bosom and a softer look came into her eyes; her voice was low and sweet, as it had been the morning he asked for Strang.  As she saw the despair deepening in the man’s face a great pity swept over her and she stretched out her arms to him with an aching cry, “Marion is gone—­gone—­gone,” she moaned, “and you must go, too!  O, I know you love her—­she told me that you loved her, as I love Strang, my king!  We have both lost—­lost—­and you must go—­as—­I—­shall—­go!” She turned away from him with a cry so heart-breaking in its pain that Nathaniel felt himself trembling to the soul.  In another instant she had faced him again, fighting back a strange calm into her face.