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 mésalliance 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