“Do you mean that, Betty?” he asked. He took her hands loosely in his and relentlessly considered her crimsoned face. “I reckon it will always be right hard to refuse you anything—here is one settler the Purchase will never get!” and he laughed softly.
“It was the Purchase—you were going there!” she cried.
“No, I wasn't, Betty; that notion died its natural death long ago. When we are sure you will be safe at Belle Plain with just the Cavendishes, I am going into Raleigh to wait as best I can until spring.” He spoke so gravely, that she asked in quick alarm.
“And then, Bruce—what?”
“And then—Oh, Betty, I'm starving—” All in a moment he lifted her slender figure in his arms, gathering her close to him. “And then, this—and this—and this, sweetheart—and more—and—oh, Betty! Betty!”
When Murrell was brought to trial his lawyers were able to produce a host of witnesses whose sworn testimony showed that so simple a thing as perjury had no terrors for them. His fight for liberty was waged in and out of court with incredible bitterness, and, as judge and jury were only human, the outlaw escaped with the relatively light sentence of twelve years' imprisonment; he died, however, before the expiration of his term.
The judge, where he returned to Raleigh, resumed his own name of Turberville, and he allowed it to be known that he would not be offended by the prefix of General. During his absence he had accumulated a wealth of evidence of undoubted authenticity, with the result that his claim against the Fentress estate was sustained by the courts, and when The Oaks with its stock and slaves was offered for sale, he, as the principal creditor, was able to buy it in.
One of his first acts after taking possession of the property was to have Mahaffy reinterred in the grove of oaks below his bedroom windows, and he marked the spot with a great square of granite. The judge, visibly shaken by his emotions, saw the massive boulder go into place.
“Harsh and rugged like the nature of him who lies beneath it—but enduring, too, as he was,” he murmured. He turned to Yancy and Hannibal, and added,
“You will lay me beside him when I die.”