On the night after their conversation, which we have recorded, Marble, who always, as Long said, if he put his hands to the plough, not only did not look back, but did not look forward either, and only attended to holding the plough, started from the settlement to reach a small hill at a little distance, partly to select trees from the lot for their house, and partly to think over the practicability of the scheme they had been discussing. He was walking slowly along, with his eyes fixed upon the ground, when, suddenly looking up, he found himself back to the place whence he started.
“Can’t you go as far as you can see?” he muttered to himself, starting again for the wood: but again he became lost in thought, and again he found himself at the same place.
“Well if you can’t go as far as you can see you may go home,” he said, casting a regretful look at the woodland, and turning away. It was a habit he always had of talking to himself, and it saved him many hours of trouble.
Soon after this, he started for his home away in old Massachusetts, which, upon reaching, he found was not entirely exempt from the joint hands of time and sorrow. He had been at home from the West but a short time, when his youngest child, a boy of thirteen, was taken sick; and thus his plans were frustrated. His sickness was short and painful; and his burning cheeks and glassy bright eyes told but too plainly to the father’s heart that George’s days were numbered.
About this time he, too, became interested in clairvoyance. Before going West, he had, at the request of a friend, consulted a phrenological subject who predicted his departure, and also his misfortune—for such she termed the death in the family. After finishing her talk, she informed him that she sometimes told fortunes; and asked if she might tell his.
He did not care about it; had little faith in such things, etc.; but, if she would like to, he had no objections.
She run the cards over, and told him essentially what she had said before; adding that, in the course of a specified time, she thought he would be in steady business.
He was, at that time, all ready to go West with a party of men to establish the Marquet Iron Works.
He went and returned. George died; but, as yet, no steady employment presented itself.
While staying in Marquet, a young man, an entire stranger in Massachusetts, had described Dungeon Rock to him as his place to work, but told no names, even of the town or state where it lay. He was, at that time, careless, or even skeptical about the matter; but, after George’s death, he aroused himself, and concluded to investigate, and, if he could, to understand the subject.