The Bondman: A New Saga

by Sir Hall Caine

The Book of Red Jason.

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CHAPTER I.
What Befell Old Adam.

Now it would be a long task to follow closely all that befell the dear old Adam Fairbrother, from the time when the ship wherein he sailed for Iceland weighed anchor in Ramsey bay. Yet not to know what strange risks he ran, and how in the end he overcame all dangers, by God's grace and his own extreme labor, is not to know this story of how two good men with a good woman between them pursued each other over the earth with vows of vengeance, and came together at length in heaven's good time and way. So not to weary the spirit with much speaking, yet to leave nothing unsaid that shall carry us onward to that great hour when Red Jason and Michael Sunlocks stood face to face, let us begin where Adam's peril began, and hasten forward to where it ended.

Fourteen days out of Ramsey, in latitude of 64 degrees, distant about five leagues north of the Faroes, and in the course of west northwest, hoping to make the western shores of Iceland, Adam with his shipmates was overtaken by foul weather, with high seas and strong wind opposing them stoutly from the northwest. Thus they were driven well into the latitude of sixty-six off the eastern coast of Iceland, and there, though the seas still ran as high as to the poop, they were much beset by extraordinary pieces of ice which appeared to come down from Greenland. Then the wind abated, and an unsearchable and noisome fog followed; so dense that not an acre of sea could be seen from the top-mast head, and so foul that the compasses would not work in it. After that, though they wrought night and day with poles and spikes, they were beaten among the ice as scarce any ship ever was before, and so terrible were the blows they suffered that many a time they thought the planks must be wrenched from the vessel's sides. Nevertheless they let fall sail, thinking to force their way through the ice before they were stowed to pieces, and, though the wind was low, yet the ship felt the canvas and cleared the shoals that encompassed her. The wind then fell to a calm, but still the fog hung heavily over the sea, which was black and smelt horribly. And when they thought to try their soundings, knowing that somewhere thereabouts the land must surely be, they heard a noise that seemed at first like the tract of the shore. It was worse than that, for it was the rut of a great bank of ice, two hundred miles deep, breaking away from the far shores of Greenland, and coming with its steady sweep, such as no human power could resist, towards the coasts of Iceland. Between that vast ice floe and the land they lay, with its hollow and terrible voice in their ears, and with no power to fly from it, for their sail hung loose and idle in the dead stillness of the air.

Oh! it is an awful thing to know that death is swooping down on you hour by hour; to hear it coming with its hideous thunder, like the groans of damned souls, and yet to see nothing of your danger for the day darkness that blinds you. But the shipmaster was a stout-hearted fellow, and while the fog continued and he was without the help of wind or compass, he let go a raven that he had aboard to see if it could discover land. The raven flew to the northeast, and did not return to the ship, and by that token the master knew that the land of Iceland lay somewhere near on their starboard bow. So he was for lowering the long boat, to stand in with the coast and learn what part of Iceland it was, when suddenly the wind larged again, and before long it blew with violence.

At this their peril was much increased, for the night before had been bitterly cold, and the sails had been frozen where they hung outspread, and some of the cables were as stiff as icicles and half as thick as a man's body. Thus under wind that in a short space rose to a great storm, with canvas that could not be reefed, an ocean of ice coming down behind, and seas beneath of an untouchable depth, they were driven on and on towards an unknown shore.

From the like danger may God save all Christian men, even as he saved old Adam and his fellowship, for they had begun to prepare themselves to make a good end of their hopeless lives, when in the lift of the fog the master saw an opening in the coast, and got into it, and his ship rode safely on a quick tide down the fiord called Seydis fiord.

There the same night they dropped anchor in a good sound, and went instantly to prayer, to praise God for His delivery of them, and Adam called the haven where they moored, "The Harbor of Good Providence." So with cheerful spirits, thinking themselves indifferently safe, they sought their births, and so ended the first part of their peril in God's mercy and salvation.

But the storm that had driven them into their place of refuge drove their dread enemy after them, and in the night, while they lay in the first sleep of four days, the ice encompassed them and crushed them against the rocks. The blow struck Adam out of a tranquil rest, and he thought nothing better than that he was awakening for another world. All hands were called to the pumps, for the master still thought the ship was staunch and might be pushed along the coast by the shoulders with crows of iron, and thus ride out to sea. But though they worked until the pumps sucked, it was clear that the poor vessel was stuck fast in the ice, and that she must soon get her death-wound. So, at break of day, the master and crew, with Adam Fairbrother, took what they could carry of provisions and clothes, and clambered ashore, leaving the ship to her fate.

It was a bleak and desolate coast they had landed upon, with never a house in sight, never a cave that they might shelter in, or a stone that would cover them against the wind; with nothing around save the bare face of a broad fell, black and lifeless, strewn over with small light stones sucked full of holes like the honeycomb, but without trees, or bush, or grass, or green moss. And there they suffered more privations than it is needful to tell, waiting for the ice to break, looking on at its many colors of blue, and purple, and emerald green, and yellow, and its many strange and wonderful shapes, resembling churches, and castles, and spires, and turrets, and cities, all ablaze in the noonday sun.

They built themselves a rude hut of the stones like pumice, and, expecting the dissolution of the ice, they kept watch on their ship, which itself looked like an iceberg frozen into a ship's shape. And meantime some of their company suffered very sorely. Though the year was not yet far advanced towards winter, some of the men swooned of the cold that came up from the ice of the fiord; the teeth of others became loose and the flesh of their gums fell away, and on the soles of the feet of a few the frost of the nights raised blisters as big as walnuts.

Partly from these privations and partly from loss of heart when at last one evil day he saw his good ship crushed to splinters against the rocks, the master fell sick, and was brought so low that in less than a week he lay expecting his good hour. And feeling his extremity he appointed Adam to succeed him as director of the company, to guide them to safety over the land, since Providence forbade that they should sail on the seas. Then, all being done, so far as his help could avail, he stretched himself out for his end, only praying in his last hours that he might be allowed to drink as much ale as he liked from the ship's stores that had been saved. This Adam ordered that he should, and as long as he lived the ale was brought to him in the hut where he lay, and he drank it until, between draught and draught, it froze in the jug at his side. After that he died—an honest, a worthy, and strong-hearted man.

And Adam, being now by choice of the late master and consent of his crew the leader of the company, began to make a review of all men and clothes and victuals, and found that there were eleven of them in all, with little more than they stood up in, and provisions to last them, with sparing, three weeks at utmost. And seeing that they were cut off from all hope of a passage by sea, he set himself to count the chances of a journey by land, and by help of the ship's charts and much beating of the wings of memory to recover what he had learned of Iceland in the days when his dear lad Sunlocks had left him for these shores, he reckoned that by following the sea line under the feet of the great Vatna-Jokull, they might hope, if they could hold out so long, to reach Reykjavik at last. Long and weary the journey must be, with no town and scarce a village to break it, and no prospect of shelter by the way, save what a few farms might give them. So Adam ordered the carpenter to recover what he could of the ship's sails to make a tent, and of its broken timbers to make a cart to carry victuals, and when this was done they set off along the fell side on the first stage of their journey.

The same day, towards nightfall, they came upon a little group of grass-covered houses at the top of the fiord, and saw the people of Iceland for the first time. They were a little colony cut off by impassable mountains from their fellows within the island, and having no ships in which they dare venture to their kind on the seas without; tall and strong-limbed in their persons, commonly of yellow hair, but sometimes of red, of which neither sex was ashamed; living on bread that was scarce eatable, being made of fish that had been dried and powdered; lazy and unclean; squalid and mean-spirited, and with the appearance of being depressed and kept under. It was a cheerless life they lived at the feet of the great ice-bound jokull and the margin of the frozen sea, so that looking around on the desolate place and the dumb wilderness of things before and behind, Adam asked himself why and how any living souls had ever ventured there.

But for all that the little colony were poor and wretched, the hearts of the shipwrecked company leapt up at sight of them, and in the joyful gabble of unintelligible speech between them old Adam found that he could understand some of the words. And when the islanders saw that in some sort Adam understood them they singled him out from the rest of his company, falling on his neck and kissing him after the way of their nation, and concluding among themselves that he was one of their own people who had gone away in his youth and never been heard of after. And Adam, though he looked shy at their musty kisses, was nothing loth to allow that they might be Manxmen strayed and lost.

For Adam and his followers two things came of this encounter, and the one was to forward and the other to retard their journey. The first was that the islanders sold them twelve ponies, of the small breed that abound in that latitude, and gave them a guide to lead them the nearest way to the capital. The ponies cost them forty kroner, or more than two pounds apiece, and the guide was to stand to them in two kroner, or two shillings, a day. This took half of all they had in money, and many were the heavy groans of the men at parting with it; but Adam argued that their money was of no other value there than as a help out of their extremity, and that all the gold in the banks, if he had it, would be less to him then than the little beast he was bestriding.

The second of the two things that followed on that meeting with the islanders was that, just as they had started afresh on their way, now twelve in all, each man on his horse, and a horse in the shafts of the cart that held the victuals, a woman came running after them with a child in her arms, and besought them to take her with them. That anyone could wish to share their outcast state was their first surprise, but the woman's terrified looks, her tears and passionate pleadings, seemed to say that to be homeless and houseless on the face of that trackless land was not so awful a fate but that other miseries could conquer the fear of it. So, failing to learn more of her condition, than that she was friendless and alone, Adam ordered that, with her child, she should be lifted into the cart that was driven ahead of them.

But within an hour they were overtaken by a man, who came galloping after them, and said the woman had stolen the child—that it was his child, and that he had come to carry it back with him. At that Adam called on the woman to answer through the guide, and she said that the man was indeed the child's father, but that she was its mother; that he was a farmer, and had married her only that he might have a son to leave his farm to; that having given him this child he had turned her out of doors, and that in love and yearning for her little one, from whom she had been so cruelly parted, she had stolen into her old home, plucked up the babe and run away with it. Hearing this story, which the woman told through her tears, Adam answered the man that if the law of his country allowed a father to deal so with the mother of his child it was a base and unnatural law, and merited the obedience of no man; so he meant to protect the woman against both it and him, and carry her along with their company. With that answer the man turned tail, but Adam's victory over him was dearly bought, at the cost of much vexation afterwards and sore delay on the hard journey.

And now it would be long to tell of the trials of that passage over those gaunt solitudes, where there was no fingerpost or mark of other human travellers. The men bore up bravely, loving most to comfort the woman and do her any tender office, or carry her child before them on their saddles. And many a time, at sight of the little one, and at hearing its simple prattle in a tongue they did not understand, the poor fellows would burst into tears, as if remembering, with a double pang, that they were exiles from that country far away, where other mothers held their own children to their breasts. Two of them sickened of the cold, and had to be left behind at a farm, where the people were kind and gentle and promised to nurse them until their companions could return for them. But the heaviest blow to all that company was the sickness and death of the child. Tenderly the rude sailor men nursed the little fellow one by one, and when nothing availed to keep his sweet face among them they mourned his loss as the worst disaster that had yet befallen them. The mother herself was distraught, and in the madness of her agony turned on Adam and reproached him, saying he had brought her child into this wilderness to kill it. Adam understood her misery too well to rebuke her ingratitude, and the same night that her babe was laid in his rest with a cross of willow wood to mark the place of it, she disappeared from their company, and where she went or what became of her no one knew, for she was seen by them no more.

But next morning they were overtaken by a number of men riding hard, and one of them was the woman's husband, and another the High Sheriff of the Quarter. These two called on Adam to deliver up the child, and when he told them that it was dead, and the mother gone, the husband would have fallen upon him with his knife, but for the Sheriff, who, keeping the peace, said that, as accessory after the fact of theft, Adam himself must go to prison.

Now, at this the crew of the ship began to set up a woeful wail, and to double their fists and measure the strength of nine sturdy British seamen against that of ten lanky Icelanders. But Adam restrained them from violence, and indeed there was need for none, for the Sheriff was in no mood to carry his prisoner away with him. All he did was to take out his papers, and fill them up with the name and description that Adam gave him, and then hand them over to Adam himself, saying they were the warrant for his imprisonment, and that he was to go on his way until he came to the next district, where there was a house of detention, which the guide would find for him, and there deliver up the documents to the Sheriff in charge.

With such instructions, and never doubting but they would be followed, the good man and his people wheeled about, and returned as they came.

And being so easily rid of them the sailors began to laugh at their simpleness, and, with many satisfied grunts, to advise the speedy destruction of the silly warrant that was the sole witness against Adam. But Adam himself said, no—that he was touched by the simplicity of a people that could trust a man to take himself to prison, and he would not wrong that confidence by any cheating. So he ordered the guide to lead on where he had been directed.

They reached the prison towards nightfall, and there old Adam bade a touching farewell of his people, urging them not to wait for him, but to push on to Reykjavik where alone they could find ships to take them home to England. And some of the good fellows wept at this parting, though they all thought it foolish, but one old salt named Chalse shed no tears, and only looked crazier than ever, and chuckled within himself from some dark cause.

And indeed there was small reason to weep, because, simple as the first Sheriff's conduct had been, that of the second Sheriff was yet simpler, for when Adam presented himself as a prisoner the Sheriff asked for his papers, and then diving into his pocket to find them, the good man found that they were gone—lost, dropped by the way or destroyed by accident—and no search sufficed to recover them. So failing of his warrant the Sheriff shook his head at Adam's story and declined to imprison him, and the prisoner had no choice but to go free. Thus Adam returned to his company, who heard with laughter and delight of the close of his adventure, all save Chalse, who looked sheepish and edged away whenever Adam glanced at him. Thus ended in merriment an incident that threatened many evil consequences, and was attended by two luckless mischances.

The first of these two was that, by going to the prison, which lay three Danish miles out of the direct track to the capital, Adam and his company had missed young Oscar and Zoega's men, whom Michael Sunlocks had sent out from Reykjavik in search of them. The second was that their guide had disappeared and left them, within an hour of bringing them to the door of the Sheriff. His name was Jonas; he had been an idle and a selfish fellow; he had demanded his wages day by day; and seeing Adam part from the rest, he had concluded that with the purse-bearer the purse of the company had gone. But he alone had known the course, and, worthless as he had been to them in other ways, the men began to rail at him when they found that he had abandoned them and left them to struggle on without help.

"The sweep!" "the thief!" "the wastrel!" "the gomerstang!" they called him, with wilder names beside. But old Adam rebuked them and said, "Good friends, I would persuade myself that urgent reasons alone can have induced this poor man to leave us. Were we not ourselves constrained to forsake two of our number several days back, though with the full design of returning to them to aid them when it should lie in our power? Thus I cannot blame the Icelander without more knowledge of his intent, and so let us push on still and trust in God to deliver us, as he surely will."

And, sure enough, the next day after they came upon a man who undertook the place of the guide who had forsaken them. He was a priest and a very learned man, but poor as the poorest farmer. He spoke in Latin, and in imperfect Latin Adam made shift to answer him. His clothes were all but worn to rags, and he was shoeing his horse in the little garth before his door. His house, which stood alone save for the wooden church beside it, looked on the outside like a line of grass cones, hardly higher to their peaks than the head of a tall man, and in the inside it was low, dark, noisome, and noisy. In one room to which Chalse and the seamen were taken, three or four young children were playing, an old woman was spinning, and a younger woman, the priest's wife, was washing clothes. This was the living room and sleeping room, the birth room and death room of the whole family. In another room, to which Adam was led by the priest himself, the floor was strewn with saddles, nails, hammers, horseshoes, whips, and spades, and the walls were covered with bookshelves, whereon stood many precious old black-letter volumes. This was the workshop and study, wherein the good priest spent his long, dark days of winter.

And, being once more fully equipped for the journey, Adam ordered that they should lose no time in setting out afresh, with the priest on his own pony in front of them. Two days then passed without misadventure of any kind, and in that time they had come to a village, at which they should have forsaken the coast line and made for the interior, in order that they might cross to Reykjavik by way of Thingvellir, and so cut off the peninsula ending in the Smoky Point. But a heavy fall of snow coming down suddenly, they were compelled to seek shelter at a farm, the only one for more than a hundred miles to east or west of them. There they rested while the snowstorm lasted, and it was the same weary downfall that kept Greeba to her house while Red Jason lay in his brain fever in the cell in the High Street, and Michael Sunlocks was out on the sea in search of themselves.

And when the snow had ceased to fall, and the frost that followed had hardened it, and the country, now white instead of black, was again fit to travel upon, it was found that the priest was unwilling to start. Then it appeared that downright drinking had been his sole recreation and his only bane; that the most serious affairs of night and day had always submitted to this great business; that in the interval of waiting for the passing of the snow, finding himself with a few kroner at command, he had begun on his favorite occupation, and that he now was too deeply immersed therein to be disturbed in less than a week.

Once again the seamen railed at their guide, as well as at the whole race of Icelanders, but Adam was all for lenity towards the priest and hope for themselves.

"My faithful companions," he said, "be not dismayed by any of these disasters, but let us put our whole trust in God. If it be our fortune to end our days in this desolate land, we are as near heaven here as at home. Yet let us use all honest efforts to save our natural lives, and we are not yet so far past hope of doing so but that I see a fair way by which we may effect it."

With that they set out again alone, and within an hour they had fallen on the second mischance of their journey, for failing to find the pass that would have led them across country through Thingvellir, they kept close by the sea line in the direction of the Smoky Point.

Now these misadventures, first with the mother and child, next with the Sheriffs, and then with the guides, though they kept back Adam and his company from that quick deliverance which they would have found in meeting with the messengers of Michael Sunlocks or with Michael Sunlocks himself, yet brought them in the end in the way of the only persons who are important to this story. For pursuing their mistaken way by the line of sea they came upon the place called Krisuvik. It was a grim wilderness of awful things, not cold and dead and dumb like the rest of that haggard land, but hot and alive with inhuman fire and clamorous with devilish noises. A wide ashen plain within a circle of hills whereon little snow could rest for the furnace that raged beneath the surface; shooting with shrill whistles its shafts of hot steam from a hundred fumeroles; bubbling up in a thousand jets of boiling water; hissing from a score of green cauldrons; grumbling low with mournful sounds underneath like the voice of subterranean wind, and sending up a noxious stench through heavy whorls of vapor that rolled in a fetid atmosphere overhead. Oh, it was a fearsome place, like nothing on God's earth but a mouldering wreck of human body, vast and shapeless, and pierced deep with foulest ulcers; a leper spot on earth's face; a seething vat full of broth of hell's own brewing. And all around was the peaceful snow, and beyond the lines of the southern hills was the tranquil sea, and within the northern mountains was a quiet lake of water as green as the grass of spring.

Coming upon the ghastly place, printed deep with Satan's own features on the face of it, Adam thought that surely no human footstep was ever meant by God to echo among bodeful noises. But there he found two wooden sheds busy with troops of men coming and going about them, and a third house of the same kind in an early stage of building. Then asking questions as well as he was able he learned that the boiling pits were the Sulphur Mines that the new Governor, the President of the Republic, had lately turned to account as a penal settlement, that the two completed sheds were the workshops and sleeping places of the prisoners, and that the unfinished house was intended for their hospital.

And it so chanced that while with his poor broken company Adam rested on his horse, to look on at this sight with eyes of wonder and fear, a gang of four prisoners passed on to their work in charge of as many warders, and one of the four men was Red Jason. His long red hair was gone, his face was thin and pale instead of full and tawny, and his eyes, once so bright, were heavy and slow. He walked in file, and about his neck was a collar of iron, with a bow coming over his head and ending on the forehead in a bell that rang as he went along. The wild vitality of his strong figure seemed lost, he bent forward as he walked, and looked steadfastly on the ground.

Yet, changed as he was, Adam knew him at a glance, and between surprise and terror, called on him by his name. But Jason heard nothing, and strode on like a man who had suddenly become deaf and blind under the shock of some evil day.

"Jason! Jason!" Adam cried again, and he dropped from the saddle to run towards him. But the warders raised their hands to warn the old man off, and Jason went on between them, without ever lifting his eyes or making sign or signal.

"Now, God save us! what can this mean?" cried Adam; and though with the lame help of his "old Manx" he questioned as well as he was able the men who were at work at the building of the hospital, nothing could he learn but one thing, and that was the strange and wondrous chance that his own eyes revealed to him: namely, that the last face he saw as he was leaving Mann, on that bad night when he stole away from Greeba while she slept, was the first face he had seen to know it since he set foot on Iceland.

Nor was this surprise the only one that lay waiting for him in that gaunt place. Pushing on towards Reykjavik, the quicker for this sight of Red Jason, and with many troubled thoughts of Michael Sunlocks, Adam came with his company to the foot of the mountain that has to be crossed before the lava plain is reached which leads to the capital. And there the narrow pass was blocked to them for half-an-hour of precious time by a long train of men and ponies coming down the bridle path. They were Danes, to the number of fifty at least, mounted on as many horses, and with a score of tired horses driven on ahead of them. What their work and mission was in that grim waste Adam could not learn until he saw that the foremost of the troop had drawn up at one of the two wooden sheds, and then he gathered from many signs that they were there as warders to take charge of the settlement in place of the Icelandic officers who had hitherto held possession of it.

Little time he had, however, to learn the riddle of these strange doings, or get knowledge of the double rupture of state of affairs that had caused them, for presently old Chalse came hurrying back to him from some distance ahead, with a scared face and stammering tongue, and one nervous hand pointing upwards to where the last of the men and horses were coming down the bridle path.

"Lord-a-massy, who's this," cried Chalse; and following the direction of his hand Adam saw what the old fellow pointed at, and the sight seemed to freeze the blood at his heart.

It was Michael Sunlocks riding between two of the Danish warders as their prisoner, silent, fettered and bound.

Then Adam felt as if he had somewhere fallen into a long sleep, and was now awakening to a new life in a new world, where the people were the same as in the old one but everything about them was strange and terrible. But he recovered from his terror as Michael Sunlocks came on, and he called to him, and Sunlocks heard him, and turned towards him with a look of joy and pain in one quick glance of a moment.

"My son! my boy!" cried Adam.

"Father! Father!" cried Michael Sunlocks.

But in an instant the warders had closed about Sunlocks, and hurried him on in the midst of them, while their loud shouts drowned all other voices.

And when the troop had passed him, Adam sat a moment silent on his little beast, and then he turned to his company and said:

"My good friends and faithful companions, my journey is at an end, and you must go on without me. I came to this land of Iceland only to find one who is my son indeed, though not flesh of my flesh, thinking to rest my old arm on his young shoulder. I have found him now, but he is in trouble, from some cause that I have yet to learn, and it is my old shoulder that his young arm must rest upon. And this that you have witnessed is not the meeting I looked for, and built my hopes on, and buoyed up my failing spirits with, through all the trouble of our many weary days. But God's will be done! So go your ways and leave me where His wisdom has brought me, and may His mercy fetch you in safety to your native country, and to the good souls waiting for you there."

But the rough fellows protested that come what might, leave him they never would, and old Chalse without more ado began to make ready to pitch their tent on the thin patch of grass where they stood.

And that evening, while Adam wandered over the valley, trying to get better knowledge of the strange events which he had read as if by flashes of lightning, and hearing in broken echoes of the rise and fall of the Republic, of the rise and fall of Michael Sunlocks, of the fall and return of Jorgen Jorgensen, a more wondrous chance than any that had yet befallen him was fast coming his way.

For late that night, when he sat in his grief, with his companions busied about him, comforting him with what tender offices and soft words their courageous minds could think of, a young Icelander came to the gap of the tent and asked, in broken English, if they would give a night's shelter to a lady who could find no other lodging, and was alone save for himself, who had been her guide from Reykjavik.

At that word Adam's own troubles were gone from him in an instant, and, though his people would have demurred, he called on the Icelander to fetch the lady in, and presently she came, and then all together stood dumbfounded, for the lady was Greeba herself.

It would be hard to tell how at first every other feeling was lost in one of surprise at the strange meeting of father and daughter, how surprise gave place to joy, and joy to pain, as bit by bit the history of their several adventures was unfolded each to the other. And while Greeba heard of the mischances that had overtaken old Adam, he, on his part, heard of the death of her mother and her brother's ill-usage, of the message that came from Michael Sunlocks and her flight from home, of how she came to Iceland and was married, and of how Sunlocks went in pursuit of himself, and, returning to the capital, was betrayed into the hands of his enemies. All the long story of plot and passion he heard in the wild tangle of her hot and broken words, save only that part of it which concerned her quarrel with her husband; but when he mentioned Red Jason, saying that he had seen him, he heard that sad passage of her story also, told with fear and many bitter tears.

Adam comforted Greeba with what words of cheer he could command, in an hour when his own heart was dark and hopeless, and then amid the turmoil of so many emotions, the night being worn to midnight, they composed themselves to sleep.

Next morning, rising anxious and unrested, Adam saw the Icelandic warders, who had been supplanted in their employment by the Danes, start away from the settlement for their homes, and after them went a group of the Danish prisoners as free men, who had been imprisoned by the Republic as spies of the Government of Denmark. By this time Adam had decided on his course.

"Greeba," he said, "this imprisonment of Michael Sunlocks is unjust, and I see a way to put an end to it. No governor shall sentence him without judge or jury. But I will go on to Reykjavik and appeal to this Jorgen Jorgensen. If he will not hear me, I will appeal to his master, the King of Denmark. If Denmark will not listen, I will appeal to England, for Michael Sunlocks is a British subject, and may claim the rights of an Englishman. And if England turns a deaf ear to me, I will address my prayer to God, who has never yet failed to right the wronged, or humble the arrogance of the mighty. Thank Heaven, that has brought me here. I thought I was coming to end my days in peace by his side who would shelter my poor foolish gray head, that had forgotten to protect itself. But strange are the ways of Providence. God has had his own purposes in bringing me here thus blindfolded, and, thanks to His mercy! I am not yet so old but I may yet do something. So come, girl, come, make ready, and we will go on our great errand together."

But Greeba had her own ends from the first in following Michael Sunlocks to the place of his imprisonment, and she answered and said,

"No, father, no. You may go on to Reykjavik, and do all this if you can, but my place is here, at my husband's side. He lost faith in my affection, and said I had married him for the glory that his place would bring me; but he shall see what a woman can go through for sake of the man she loves. I have my own plan of life in this place, and the power to carry it out. Therefore do not fear to leave me, but go, and God prosper you!"

"Let it be so," said Adam, and with that, after some words of explanation with the brave fellows who had followed him from the hour when, as ship-broken men, they set out on foot from the eastern fiord, he started on his journey afresh, leaving the tent and the last of their ship's victuals behind with Greeba, for Reykjavik was no more than a day's ride from Krisuvik.

When he was gone, Greeba went down to the tents at the mouth of the mines, and asked for the Captain. A Danish gentleman who did not know her, and whom she did not know, answered to that title, and then she said that hearing that a hospital was being built she had come out from Reykjavik to offer herself as a nurse if a nurse was wanted.

"A nurse is wanted," said the Captain, "and though we had no thought of a woman you have come in the nick of time."

So Greeba, under some assumed name, unknown to the contingent of Danish officers fresh from Denmark, who had that day taken the places of the Icelandic warders, and recognizable in her true character by two men only in Krisuvik, Michael Sunlocks and Red Jason, if ever they should see her, took up her employment as hospital nurse to the sick prisoners of the Sulphur Mines.

But having attained her end, or the first part of it, her heart was torn by many conflicting feelings. Would she meet with her husband? Would he come to be in her own charge? Oh, God forbid that it should ever come to pass. Yet God grant it, too, for that might help him to a swifter release than her dear old father could compass. Would she see Red Jason? Would Michael Sunlocks ever see him? Oh! God forbid that also. And yet, and yet, God grant it, after all.

Such were her hopes and fears, when the hospital shed was finished, and she took her place within it. And now let us see how heaven fulfilled them.

---

CHAPTER II.
The Sulphur Mines.

Red Jason and Michael Sunlocks were together at last, within the narrow stockade of a penal settlement. These two, who had followed each other from land to land, the one on his errand of vengeance, the other on his mission of mercy, both now nourishing hatred and lust of blood, were thrown as prisoners into the Sulphur Mines of Krisuvik. There they met, they spoke, they lived and worked side by side yet neither knew the other for the man he had sought so long and never found. This is the strange and wondrous chance that has now to be recorded, and only to think of it, whether as accident or God's ordinance, makes the blood to tingle in every vein. Poor and petty are the passions of man, and God's hand is over all.

The only work of Michael Sunlocks which Jorgen Jorgensen did not undo in the swift reprisals which followed on the restoration of his power was the use of the Sulphur Mines as a convict settlement. All he did was to substitute Danish for Icelandic guards, but this change was the beginning and end of the great event that followed. The Icelandic guards knew Red Jason, and if Michael Sunlocks had been sent out to them they would have known him also, and thus the two men must have soon known each other. But the Danish warders knew nothing of Jason, and when they brought out Michael Sunlocks they sent the Icelandic guards home. Thus Jason never heard that Michael Sunlocks was at the Sulphur Mines, and though in the whirl of many vague impressions, the distant hum of a world far off, there floated into his mind the news of the fall of the Republic he could never suspect, and there was no one to tell him, that the man whom he had pursued and never yet seen, the man he hated and sought to slay, was a convict like himself, working daily and hourly within sight and sound of him.

Michael Sunlocks, on his part, knew well that Red Jason had been sent to the Sulphur Mines; but he also knew that he had signed Jason's pardon and ordered his release. More than this, he had learned that Jorgen Jorgensen had liberated all who had been condemned by the Republic, and so he concluded that Jason had become a free man when he himself became a prisoner. But there had been a delay in the despatch of Jason's pardon, and when the Republic had fallen and the Danish officers had taken the place of the Icelanders, the captain of the mines had released the political prisoners only, and Jason, as a felon, had been retained. The other prisoners at the mines, some fifty in all, knew neither Michael Sunlocks nor Red Jason. They were old criminals from remote districts, sentenced to the jail at Reykjavik, during the first rule of Jorgen Jorgensen, and sent out to Krisuvik in the early days of the Republic.

Thus it chanced from the first that though together within a narrow space of ground Jason and Sunlocks were cut off from all knowledge of each other such as might have been gleaned from those about them. And the discipline of the settlement kept them back from that knowledge by keeping them for many months apart.

The two houses used as workshops and sleeping places were at opposite sides of the stockade, one at the north, the other at the south; one overlooking a broad waste of sea, the other at the margin of a dark lake of gloomy shore. Red Jason was assigned to the house near the sea, Michael Sunlocks to the house by the lake. These houses were built of squared logs with earthen floors, and wooden benches for beds. The prisoners entered them at eight o'clock in the evening, and left them at five in the morning, their hours of labor in summer being from five a. m. to eight p. m. They brought two tin cans, one tin containing their food, their second meal of the day, a pound of stock fish, and four ounces of bread; the other tin intended for their refuse of slops and victuals and dirt of other kinds. Each house contained some twenty-five men and boys, and so peopled and used they had quickly become grimy and pestilential, the walls blotched with vermin stains, the floors encrusted with hard trodden filth that was wet and slippery to the feet, and the atmosphere damp and foul to the nostrils from the sickening odors of decayed food.

It had been a regulation from the beginning that the latest comer at each of these houses should serve three months as housekeeper, with the duty of cleansing the horrible place every morning after his housemates had left it for their work. During this time he wore the collar of iron and the bell over his forehead, for it was his period of probation and of special degradation. Thus Red Jason served as housekeeper in the house by the sea, while Michael Sunlocks did the same duty in the house by the lake. Jason went through his work listlessly, slowly, hopelessly, but without a murmur. Michael Sunlocks rebelled against its horrible necessities, for every morning his gorge rose at the exhalations of five-and-twenty unwashed human bodies, and the insupportable odor that came of their filthy habits.

This state of things went on for some two months, during which the two men had never met, and then an accident led to a change in the condition of both.

The sulphur dug up from the banks of the hot springs was packed in sacks and strapped upon ponies, one sack at each side of a pony and one on its back, to be taken to Hafnafiord, the nearest port for shipment to Denmark. Now the sulphur was heavy, the sacks were large, the ponies small, and the road down from the solfataras to the valley was rough with soft clay and great basaltic boulders. And one day as a line of the ponies so burdened came down the breast of the mountain, driven on by a carrier who lashed them at every step with his long whip of leather thongs, one little piebald mare, hardly bigger than a donkey, stumbled into a deep rut and fell. At that the inhuman fellow behind it flogged it again, and showered curses on it at every blow.

"Get up, get up, or I'll skin you alive," he cried, with many a hideous oath beside.

And at every fresh blow the little piebald struggled to rise but [she] could not, while its terrified eyeballs stood out from the sockets and its wide nostrils quivered.

"Get up, you little lazy devil, get up," cried the brute with the whip, and still his blows fell like raindrops, first on the mare's flanks, then on its upturned belly, then on its head, its mouth, and last of all on its eyes.

But the poor creature's load held it down, and, struggle as it would, it could not rise. The gang of prisoners on the hillside who had just before burdened the ponies and sent them off, heard this lashing and swearing, and stopped their work to look down. But they thought more of the carrier than of the fallen pony, and laughed aloud at his vain efforts to bring it to its feet.

"Send him a hand up, Jonas," shouted one of the fellows.

"Pick him up in your arms, old boy," shouted another, and at every silly sally they all roared together.

The jeering incensed the carrier, and he brought down his whip the fiercer and quicker at every fresh blow, until the whizzing of the lash sang in the air, and the hills echoed with the thuds on the pony's body. Then the little creature made one final, frantic effort, and plunging with its utmost strength it had half risen to its forelegs when one of the sacks slid from its place and got under its hind legs, whereupon the canvas gave way, the sulphur fell out, and the poor little brute slipped afresh and fell again, flat, full length, and with awful force and weight, dashing its head against a stone. At sight of this misadventure the prisoners above laughed once more, and the carrier leaped from his own saddle and kicked the fallen piebald in the mouth.

Now this had occurred within the space of a stone's-throw from the house which Red Jason lived in and cleaned, and hearing the commotion as he worked within he had come out to learn the cause of it. Seeing everything in one quick glance, he pushed along as fast as he could for the leg-fetters that bound him, and came upon the carrier as he was stamping the life out of the pony with kicks on its palpitating sides. At the next moment he had laid the fellow on his back, and then, stepping up to the piebald, he put his arms about it to lift it to its feet. Meantime the prisoners above had stopped their laughing, and were looking on with eyes of wonder at Jason's mighty strength.

"God! Is it possible he is trying to lift a horse to its feet?" cried one.

"What? and three sacks of sulphur as well?" cried another.

"Never," cried a third; and all held their breath.

Jason did not stop to remove the sacks. He wound his great arms first under the little beast's neck, and raised it to its forefeet, and then squaring his broad flanks above his legs that held the ground like the hoofs of an ox, he made one silent, slow, tremendous upward movement, and in an instant the piebald was on its feet, affrighted, trembling, with startled eyeballs and panting nostrils, but secure and safe, and with its load squared and righted on [her] back.

"Lord bless us!" cried the convicts, "the man has the strength of Samson."

And at that moment one of the warders came hurrying up to the place.

"What's this?" said the warder, looking at the carrier on the ground, who was groaning in some little blood that was flowing from the back of his head.

At that question the carrier only moaned the louder, thinking to excite the more commiseration, and Jason said not a word. But the prisoners on the hillside very eagerly shouted an explanation; whereupon the carrier, a prisoner who had been indulged, straightway lost his privileges as punishment for his ill use of the property of the Government; and Jason, as a man whose great muscles were thrown away on the paltry work of prison-cleaning, was set to delving sulphur on the banks of the hot springs.

Now this change for the better in the condition of Red Jason led to a change for the worse in that of Michael Sunlocks, for when Jason was relieved of his housekeeping and of the iron collar and bell that had been the badge of it, Sunlocks, as a malcontent, was ordered to clean Jason's house as well as his own. But so bad a change led to the great event in the lives of both, the meeting of these men face to face, and the way of it was this:

One day, the winter being then fully come, the mornings dark, and some new fallen snow lying deep over the warm ground of the stockade, Michael Sunlocks had been set to clearing away from the front of the log house on the south before Jason and his housemates had come out of it. His bodily strength had failed him greatly by this time, his face was pale, his large eyes were swollen and bloodshot, and under the heavy labor of that day his tall, slight figure stooped. But a warder stood over him leaning on a musket and urging him on with words that were harder to him than his hard work. His bell rang as he stooped, and rang again as he rose, and at every thrust of the spade it rang, so that when Jason and his gang came out of the sickening house, he heard it. And hearing the bell, he remembered that he himself had worn it, and, wondering who had succeeded him in the vile office whereof he had been relieved, he turned to look upon the man who was clearing the snow.

There are moments when the sense of our destiny is strong upon us, and this was such a moment to Red Jason. He saw Michael Sunlocks for the first time, but without knowing him, and yet at that sight every pulse beat and every nerve quivered. A great sorrow and a great pity took hold of him. The face he looked upon moved him, the voice he heard thrilled him, and by an impulse that he could not resist he stopped and turned to the warder leaning on the musket and said:

"Let me do this man's work. It would be nothing to me. He is ill. Send him up to the hospital."

"March!" shouted his own warders, and they hustled him along, and at the next minute he was gone. Then the bell stopped for an instant, for Michael Sunlocks had raised his head to look upon the man who had spoken. He did not see Jason's face, but his own face softened at the words he had heard and his bloodshot eyes grew dim.

"Go on!" cried the warder with the musket, and the bell began again.

All that day the face of Michael Sunlocks haunted the memory of Red Jason.

"Who was that man?" he asked of the prisoner who worked by his side.

"How should I know?" the other fellow answered sulkily.

In a space of rest Jason leaned on his shovel, wiped his brow, and said to his warder, "What was that man's name?"

"A 25," the warder answered moodily.

"I asked for his name," said Jason.

"What's that to you?" replied the warder.

A week went by, and the face of Sunlocks still haunted Jason's memory. It was with him early and late, the last thing that stood up before his inward eye when he lay down to sleep, the first thing that came to him when he awoke; sometimes it moved him to strange laughter when the sun was shining, and sometimes it touched him to tears when he thought of it in the night. Why was this? He did not know, he could not think, he did not try to find out. But there it was, a living face burnt into his memory—a face so strangely new to him, yet so strangely familiar, so unlike to anything he had ever yet seen, and yet so like to everything that was near and dear to himself, that he could have fancied there had never been a time when he had not had it by his side. When he put the matter to himself so he laughed and thought "How foolish." But no self-mockery banished the mystery of the power upon him of the man's face that he saw for a moment one morning in the snow.

He threw off his former listlessness and began to look keenly about him. But one week, two weeks, three weeks passed, and he could nowhere see the same face again. He asked questions but learned nothing. His fellow-prisoners began to jeer at him. Upon their souls, the big red fellow had tumbled into love with the young chap with the long flaxen hair, and maybe he thought it was a woman in disguise.

Jason knocked their chattering heads together and so stopped their ribald banter, but his warders began to watch him with suspicion, and he fell back on silence.

A month passed, and then the chain that was slowly drawing the two men together suddenly tightened. One morning the order came down from the office of the Captain that the prisoners' straw beds were to be taken out into the stockyard and burnt. The beds were not old, but dirty and damp and full of foul odors. The officers of the settlement said this was due to the filthy habits of the prisoners. The prisoners on their part said it came of the pestilential hovels they were compelled to live in, where the ground was a bog, the walls and roof were a rotten coffin, and the air was heavy and lifeless. Since the change of warders, there had been a gradual decline in the humanity with which they had been treated, and to burn up their old beds without giving them new ones was to deprive them of the last comfort that separated the condition of human beings from that of beasts of the field.

But the Captain of the Mines was in no humor to bandy parts with his prisoners, and in ordering that the beds should be burnt to prevent an outbreak of disease, he appointed that the prisoner B 25, should be told off to do the work. Now B 25 was the prison name of Red Jason, and he was selected by reason of his great bodily strength, not so much because the beds required it, as from fear of the rebellion of the poor souls who were to lose them.

So at the point of a musket Red Jason was driven on to his bad work, and sullenly he went through it, muttering deep oaths from between his grinding teeth, until he came to the log hut where Michael Sunlocks slept, and there he saw again the face that had haunted his memory.

"This bed is dry and sound," said Michael Sunlocks, "and you shall not take it."

"Away with it," shouted the warder to Jason, who had seemed to hesitate.

"It is good and wholesome, let him keep it," said Jason.

"Go on with your work," cried the warder, and the lock of his musket clicked.

"Civilized men give straw to their dogs to lie on," said Michael Sunlocks.

"It depends what dogs they are," sneered the warder.

"If you take our beds, this place will be worse than an empty kennel," said Michael Sunlocks.

"Better that than the mange," said the warder. "Get along, I tell you," he cried again, handling his musket and turning to Jason.

Then, with a glance of loathing, Jason picked up the bed in his fingers, that itched to pick up the warder by the throat, and swept out of the place.

"Slave!" cried Michael Sunlocks after him. "Pitiful, miserable, little-hearted slave!"

Jason heard the hot words that pursued him, and his face grew as red as his hair, and his head dropped into his breast. He finished his task in less than half an hour more, working like a demented man at piling up the dirty mattresses, into a vast heap, and setting light to the damp straw. And while the huge bonfire burned, and he poked long poles into it to give it air to blaze by, he made excuse of the great heat to strip of the long rough overcoat that had been given him to wear through the hard months of the winter. By this time the warder had fallen back from the scorching flames, and Jason, watching his chance, stole away under cover of deep whorls of smoke, and got back into the log cabin unobserved.

He found the place empty; the man known to him as A 25 was not anywhere to be seen. But finding his sleeping bunk—a bare slab resembling a butcher's board—he stretched his coat over it where the bed had been, and then fled away like a guilty thing.

When the great fire had burned low the warder returned, and said, "Quick there; put on your coat and let's be off."

At that Jason pretended to look about him in dismay.

"It's gone," he said, in a tone of astonishment.

"Gone? What? Have you burnt it up with the beds?" cried the warder.

"Maybe so," said Jason, meekly.

"Fool," cried the warder; "but it's your loss. Now you'll have to go in your sheepskin jacket, snow or shine."

With a cold smile about the corners of his mouth, Jason bent his head and went on ahead of his warder.

If the Captain of the Mines had been left to himself he might have been a just and even a merciful man, but he was badgered by inhuman orders from Jorgen Jorgensen at Reykjavik, and one by one the common privileges of his prisoners were withdrawn. As a result of his treatment, the prisoners besieged him with petitions as often as he crossed their path. The loudest to complain and the most rebellious against petty tyranny was Michael Sunlocks; the humblest, the meekest, the most silent under cruel persecution was Red Jason. The one seemed aflame with indignation; the other appeared destitute of all manly spirit.

"That man might be dangerous to the Government yet," thought the Captain, after one of his stormy scenes with Michael Sunlocks. "That man's heart is dead within him," he thought again, as he watched Red Jason working as he always worked, slowly, listlessly, and as if tired out and longing for the night.

The Captain's humanity at length prevailed over his Governor's rigor, and he developed a form of penal servitude among the prisoners which he called the Free Command. This was a plan whereby the men whose behavior had been good were allowed the partial liberty of living outside the stockade in huts which they built for themselves. Ten hours a day they wrought at the mines, the rest of the day and night was under their own control; and in return for their labor they were supplied with rations from the settlement.

Now Red Jason, as a docile prisoner, was almost the first to get promotion to the Free Command. He did not ask for it, he did not wish for it, and when it came he looked askance at it.

"Send somebody else," he said to his warders, but they laughed and turned him adrift.

He began to build his house of the lava stones on the mountain side, not far from the hospital, and near to a house being built by an elderly man much disfigured about the cheeks, who had been a priest, imprisoned long ago by Jorgen Jorgensen out of spite and yet baser motives. And as he worked at raising the walls of his hut, he remembered with a pang the mill he built in Port-y-Vullin, and what a whirlwind of outraged passion brought every stone of it to the ground again. With this occupation, and occasional gossip with his neighbor, he passed the evenings of his Free Command. And looking towards the hospital as often as he saw the little groups of men go up to it that told of another prisoner injured in the perilous labor of the sulphur mines, he sometimes saw a woman come out at the door to receive them.

"Who is she?" he asked of the priest.

"The foreign nurse," said the priest. "And a right good woman, too, as I have reason to say, for she nursed me back to life after that spurt of hot water had scalded these holes into my face."

That made Jason think of other scenes, and of tender passages in his broken life that were gone from him forever. He had no wish to recall them; their pleasure was too painful, their sweets too bitter; they were lost, and God grant that they could be forgotten. Yet every night as he worked at his walls he looked longingly across the shoulder of the hill in the direction of the hospital, half fancying he knew the sweet grace of the figure he sometimes saw there, and pretending with himself that he remembered the light rhythm of its movement. After a while he missed what he looked for, and then he asked his neighbor if the nurse were ill that he had not seen her lately.

"Ill? Well, yes," said the old priest. "She has been turned away from the hospital."

"What!" cried Jason; "you thought her a good nurse."

"She was too good, my lad," said the priest, "and a blackguard warder who had tried to corrupt her, and could not, announced that somebody else had done so."

"It's a lie," cried Jason.

"It was plain enough," said the priest, "that she was about to give birth to a child, and as she would make no explanation she was turned adrift."

"Where is she now?" asked Jason.

"Lying in at the farmhouse on the edge of the snow yonder," said the priest. "I saw her last night. She trusted me with her story, and it was straight and simple. Her husband had been sent out to the mines by the old scoundrel at Reykjavik. She had followed him, only to be near him and breathe the air he breathed. Perhaps with some wild hope of helping his escape she had hidden her true name and character and taken the place of a menial, being a lady born."

"Then her husband is still at the mines?" said Jason.

"Yes," said the priest.

"Does he know of her disgrace?"

"No."

"What's his name?"

"The poor soul would give me no name, but she knew her husband's number. It was A 25."

"I know him," said Jason.

Next day, his hut being built and roofed after some fashion, Jason went down to the office of the Captain of the Mines and said, "I don't like the Free Command, sir. May I give it up in favor of another man?"

"And what man, pray?" asked the Captain.

"A 25," said Jason.

"No," said the Captain.

"I've built my house, sir," said Jason, "and if you won't give it to A 25, let the poor woman from the hospital live in it, and take me back among the men."

"That won't do, my lad. Go along to your work," said the Captain.

And when Jason was gone the Captain thought within himself, "What does this mean? Is the lad planning the man's escape? And who is this English woman that she should be the next thought in his head?"

So the only result of Jason's appeal was that Michael Sunlocks was watched the closer, worked the harder, persecuted the more by petty tyrannies, and that an order was sent up to the farmhouse where Greeba lay in the dear dishonor of her early motherhood, requiring her to leave the neighborhood of Krisuvik as speedily as her condition allowed.

This was when the long dark days of winter were beginning to fall back before the sweet light of spring. And when the snow died off the mountains, and the cold garment of the jokulls was sucked full of holes like the honeycomb, and the world that had been white grew black, and the flowers began to show in the corries, and the sweet summer was coming, coming, coming, then Jason went down to the Captain of the Mines again.

"I've come, sir," he said, "to ask you to lock me up."

"Why?" said the Captain, "what have you been doing?"

"Nothing," said Jason, "but if you don't prevent me, I'll run away. This Free Command was bad enough to fear when the snow cut us off from all the world. But now that it is gone and the world is free, and the cuckoo is calling, he seems to be calling me, and I must go after him."

"Go," said the Captain, "and after you've tramped the deserts and swam the rivers, and slept on the ground, and starved on roots, we'll fetch you back, for you can never escape us, and lash you as we have lashed the others who have done likewise."

"If I go," said Jason, defiantly, "you shall never fetch me back, and if you catch me you shall never punish me."

"What? Do you threaten me?" cried the Captain.

Something in the prisoner's face terrified him, though he would have scorned to acknowledge his fear, and he straightway directed that Jason should be degraded, for insolence and insubordination, from the Free Command to the gangs.

Now this was exactly what Jason wanted, for his heart had grown sick with longing for another sight of that face which stood up before his inward eye in the darkness of the night. But remembering Jason's appeal on behalf of Michael Sunlocks, and his old suspicion regarding both, the Captain ordered that the two men should be kept apart.

So with Jason in the house by the sea, and Sunlocks in the house by the lake, the weeks went by; and the summer that was coming came, and like a bird of passage the darkness of night fled quite away, and the sun shone that shines at midnight.

And nothing did Jason see of the face that followed him in visions, and nothing did he hear of the man known to him as A 25, except reports of brutal treatment and fierce rebellion. But on a day—a month after he had returned to the stockade—he was going in his tired and listless way between warders from one solfatara at the foot of the hill to another on the breast of it, when he came upon a horror that made his blood run cold.

It was a man nailed by his right hand to a great socket of iron in a log of driftwood, with food and drink within sight but out of reach of him, and a huge knife lying close by his side. The man was A 25.

Jason saw everything and the meaning of everything in an instant, that to get at the food for which he starved that man must cut off his own right hand. And there, like a devil, at his left lay the weapon that was to tempt him.

Nothing so inhuman, so barbarous, so fiendish, so hellish, had Jason yet seen, and with a cry like the growl of an untamed beast, he broke from his warders, took the nail in his fingers like a vice, tore it up out of the bleeding hand, and set Michael Sunlocks free.

At the next instant his wrath was gone, and he had fallen back to his listless mood. Then the warders hurried up, laid hold of both men, and hustled them away with a brave show of strength and courage to the office of the Captain.

Jorgen Jorgensen himself was there, and it was he who had ordered the ruthless punishment. The warders told their tale, and he listened to them with a grin on his cruel face.

"Strap them up together," he cried, "leg to leg and arm to arm."

And when this was done he said, bitterly—

"So you two men are fond of one another's company! Well, you shall have enough of it and to spare. Day after day, week after week, month after month, like as you are now, you shall live together, until you abhor and detest and loathe the sight of each other. Now go!"

---

CHAPTER III.
The Valley of the Shadow of Death.

Red Jason and Michael Sunlocks, now lashed together, were driven back to their work like beasts of the field. They knew well what their punishment meant to them—that in every hour of life henceforward, in every act, through every thought, each man should drag a human carcase by his side. The barbarity of their doom was hideous; but strangely different were the ways they accepted it. Michael Sunlocks was aflame with indignation; Jason was crushed with shame. The upturned face of Sunlocks was pale, his flaxen hair was dishevelled, his bloodshot eyes were afire. But Jason's eyes, full of confusion, were bent on the ground, his tanned face trembled visibly, and his red hair, grown long as of old, fell over his drooping shoulders like a mantle of blood.

And as they trudged along, side by side, in the first hours of their unnatural partnership, Sunlocks struggled hard to keep his eyes from the man with whom he was condemned to live and die, lest the gorge of his very soul should rise at the sight of him. So he never once looked at Jason through many hours of that day. And Jason, on his part, laboring with the thought that it was he who by his rash act had brought both of them to this sore pass, never once lifted his eyes to the face of Sunlocks.

Yet each man knew the other's thought before ever a word had passed between them. Jason felt that Sunlocks already abhorred him, and Sunlocks knew that Jason was ashamed. This brought them after a time into sympathy of some sort, and Jason tried to speak and Sunlocks to listen.

"I did not mean to bring you to this," said Jason, humbly. And Sunlocks, with head aside, answered as well as he could for the disgust that choked him, "You did it for the best."

"But you will hate me for it," said Jason.

And once again, with what composure he could command, Sunlocks answered, "How could I hate you for saving me from such brutal treatment."

"Then you don't regret it?" said Jason, pleadingly.

"It is for you, not me, to regret it," said Sunlocks.

"Me?" said Jason.

Through all the shameful hours the sense of his own loss had never yet come to him. From first to last he had thought only of Sunlocks.

"My liberty was gone already," said Sunlocks. "But you were free—free as anyone can be in this hell on earth. Now you are bound—you are here like this—and I am the cause of it."

Then Jason's rugged face was suddenly lit up with a surprising joy. "That's nothing," he said.

"Nothing?" said Sunlocks.

"I mean that I care nothing, if you don't," said Jason.

It was the turn of Sunlocks to feel surprise. He half turned towards Jason. "Then you don't regret it?" he asked.

"No," said Jason firmly. "And you?"

Sunlocks felt that tears, not disgust, were choking him now.

"No," he answered, shamefacedly, turning his head away.

"March!" shouted the warders, who had been drinking their smuggled sneps while their prisoners had been talking.

That day, Jorgen Jorgensen went back to Reykjavik, for the time of Althing was near, and he had to prepare for his fourteen days at Thingvellir. And the Governor being gone, the Captain of the Mines made bold so far to relax the inhumanity of his sentence as to order that the two men who were bound together during the hours of work should be separated for the hours of sleep. But never forgetting his own suspicion that Red Jason was an ally of Michael Sunlocks, planning his escape, he ordered also that no speech should be allowed to pass between them. To prevent all communion of this kind he directed that the men should work and sleep apart from the other prisoners, and that their two warders should attend them night and day.

But though the rigor of discipline kept them back from free intercourse, no watchfulness could check the stolen words of comfort that helped the weary men to bear their degrading lot.

That night, the first of their life together, Michael Sunlocks looked into Jason's face and said, "I have seen you before somewhere. Where was it?"

But Jason remembered the hot words that had pursued him on the day of the burning of the beds, and so he made no answer.

After awhile, Michael Sunlocks looked closely into Jason's face again, and said, "What is your name?"

"Don't ask it," said Jason.

"Why not," said Sunlocks.

"You might remember it."

"Even so, what then?"

"Then you might also remember what I did, or tried to do, and you would hate me for it," said Jason.

"Was your crime so inhuman?" said Sunlocks.

"It would seem so," said Jason.

"Who sent you here?"

"The Republic."

"You won't tell me your name?"

"I've got none, so to speak, having had no father to give me one. I'm alone in the world."

Michael Sunlocks did not sleep much that night, for the wound in his hand was very painful, and next morning, while Jason dressed it, he looked into his face once more and said, "You say you are alone in the world."

"Yes," said Jason.

"What of your mother?"

"She's dead, poor soul."

"Have you no sister?"

"No."

"Nor brother?"

"No—that's to say—no, no."

"No one belonging to you?"

"No."

"Are you quite alone?"

"Ay, quite," said Jason. "No one to think twice what becomes of me. Nobody to trouble whether I am here or in a better place. Nobody to care whether I live or die."

He tried to laugh as he said this, but in spite of his brave show of unconcern his deep voice broke and his strong face quivered.

"But what's your own name?" he said abruptly.

"Call me—brother," said Michael Sunlocks.

"To your work," cried the warders, and they were hustled out.

Their work for the day was delving sulphur from the banks of the solfataras and loading it on the backs of the ponies. And while their warders [dozed] in the heat of the noonday sun, they wiped their brows and rested.

At that moment Jason's eyes turned towards the hospital on the opposite side of the hill, and he remembered what he had heard of the good woman who had been nurse there. This much at least he knew of her, that she was the wife of his yoke-fellow, and he was about to speak of her trouble and dishonor when Michael Sunlocks said,

"After all, you are luckiest to be alone in the world. To have ties of affection is only to be the more unhappy."

"That's true," said Jason.

"Say you love somebody, and all your heart is full of her? You lose her, and then where are you?"

"But that's not your own case," said Jason. "Your wife is alive, is she not?"

"Yes."

"Then you have not lost her?"

"There is a worse loss than that of death," said Sunlocks.

Jason glanced quickly into his face, and said tenderly, "I know—I understand. There was another man?"

"Yes."

"And he robbed you of her love?" said Jason, eagerly.

"Yes."

"And you killed him?" cried Jason, with panting breath.

"No. But God keep that man out of my hands."

"Where is he now?"

"Heaven knows. He was here, but he is gone; for when the Republic fell I was imprisoned, and two days before that he was liberated."

"Silence!" shouted the warders, awakening suddenly and hearing voices.

Jason's eyes had begun to fill, and down his rugged cheeks the big drops were rolling one by one. After that he checked the impulse to speak of the nurse. The wife of his yoke-fellow must be an evil woman. The prisoner-priest must have been taken in by her. For once the warders must have been right.

And late that night, while Jason was dressing the wounded hand of Michael Sunlocks with wool torn from his own sheepskin jerkin, he said, with his eyes down,

"I scarce thought there was anything in common between us two. You're gentleman, and I'm only a rough fellow. You have been brought up tenderly, and I have been kicked about the world since I was a lad in my poor mother's home, God rest her! But my life has been like yours in one thing."

"What's that?" said Michael Sunlocks.

"That another man has wrecked it," said Jason. "I never had but one glint of sunshine in my life, and that man wiped it out forever. It was a woman, and she was all the world to me. But she was proud and I was poor. And he was rich, and he came between us. He had everything, and the world was at his feet. I had nothing but that woman's love, and he took it from me. It was too cruel, and I could not bear it—God knows I could not."

"Wait," cried Michael Sunlocks. "Is that why you are here! Did you——you did not——no——"

"No, I know what you mean; but I did not kill him. No, no, I have never seen him. I could never meet with him, try how I would."

"Where is he now?"

"With her—in happiness and freedom and content, while I am here in misery and bondage and these ropes. But there will be a reckoning between us yet. I know there will. I swear there will. As sure as there is a God in Heaven, that man and I will one day stand together face to face."

Then Michael Sunlocks took both Jason's hands.

"My brother," he cried fervently. "Brother now more than ever; brother in suffering, brother in weakness, brother in strength."

"Silence there!" shouted the warders, and the two men were separated for the night.

The wound in the hand of Michael Sunlocks grew yet more painful, and he slept even less than before. Next day the power of life was low in him, and seeing this, Jason said, when the warders stepped up to lash them together, "He is ill, and not fit to go out. Let me work alone to-day. I'll do enough for both of us."

But no heed was paid to Jason's warning, and Michael Sunlocks was driven out by his side. All that day, the third of their life together, they worked with difficulty, for the wound in the hand of Sunlocks was not only a trouble to himself but an impediment to Jason also. Yet Jason gave no hint of that, but kept the good spade going constantly, with a smile on his face through the sweat that stood on it, and little stolen words of comfort and cheer. And when the heat was strongest, and Sunlocks would have stumbled and fallen, Jason contrived a means to use both their spades together, only requiring that Sunlocks should stoop when he stooped, that the warders might think he was still working. But their artifice was discovered, and all that came of it was that they were watched the closer and driven the harder during the hours that remained of that day.

Next day, the fourth of their direful punishment, Sunlocks rose weak and trembling, and scarce able to stand erect. And with what spirit he could summon up he called upon the warders to look upon him and see how feeble he was, and say if it was fair to his yoke-fellow that they should compel him to do the work of two men and drag a human body after him. But the warders only laughed at his protest, and once again he was driven out by Jason's side.

Long and heavy were the hours that followed, but Sunlocks, being once started on his way, bore up under it very bravely, murmuring as little as he might, out of thought for Jason. And Jason helped along his stumbling footsteps as well as he could for the arm that was bound to him. And seeing how well they worked by this double power of human kindness, the warders laughed again, and made a mock at Sunlocks for his former cry of weakness. And so, amid tender words between themselves, and jeers cast in upon them by the warders, they made shift to cheat time of another weary day.

The fifth day went by like the fourth, with heavy toil and pain to make it hard, and cruel taunts to make it bitter. And many a time, as they delved the yellow sulphur bank, a dark chill crossed the hearts of both, and they thought in their misery how cheerfully they would dig for death itself, if only it lay in the hot clay beneath them.

That night when they had returned to the hut wherein they slept, or tried to sleep, they found that some well-meaning stranger had been there in their absence and nailed up on the grimy walls above their beds, a card bearing the text, "Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." And so ghastly seemed the irony of those words in that place that Jason muttered an oath between his teeth as he read them, and Sunlocks threw himself down, being unbound for the night, with a peal of noisy laughter, and a soul full of strange bitterness.

The next day after that, the sixth of their life together, rose darker than any day that had gone before it, for the wounded hand of Michael Sunlocks was then purple and black, and swollen to the size of two hands, and his bodily strength was so low that, try as bravely as he might to stand erect, whenever he struggled to his feet he fell to the ground again. Thinking nothing of this, the warders were for strapping him up to Jason as before, but while they were in the act of doing so he fainted in their hands. Then Jason swept them from him, and vowed that the first man that touched Sunlocks again should lie dead at his feet.

"Send for the Captain," he cried, "and if the man has any bowels of compassion let him come and see what you have done."

The warders took Jason at his word, and sent a message to the office saying that one of their prisoners was mutinous, and the other pretending to be ill. After a time the Captain despatched two other warders to the help of the first two and these words along with them for his answer: "If one rebels, punish both."

Nothing loth for such exercise, the four warders set themselves to decide what the punishment should be, and while they laid their heads together, Jason was bending over Sunlocks, who was now recovered to consciousness, asking his pardon in advance for the cruel penalty that his rash act was to bring on both of them.

"Forgive me," he said. "I couldn't help it. I didn't know what I was doing."

"There is nothing to forgive, brother," whispered Michael Sunlocks.

And thus with stammering tongues they comforted one another, and with hands clasped together they waited for the punishment that had to come.

At length the warders concluded that for refusing to work, for obstinate disobedience, and for threatening, nothing would serve but that their prisoners should straightway do the most perilous work to be found that day at the sulphur mines.

Now this was the beginning of the end for Red Jason and Michael Sunlocks, and if the evil chance had not befallen them, God alone can say how long they might have lived together at Krisuvik, or how soon or how late they would have become known to one another by their true names and characters. But heaven itself had its purposes, even in the barbarity of base-hearted men, as a means towards the great end that was near at hand. And this was the way of its coming.

A strange change that no one could rightly understand had lately come upon the natural condition of the sulphur mines. The steam that rose from the solfataras had grown less and less week by week and day by day, until in some places it had altogether subsided. This was a grave sign, for in the steam lay the essence of the sulphur, and if it ceased to rise from the pits the sulphur would cease to grow.

Other changes came with this, such as that deep subterranean noises arose from parts of the plain where no fissures had yet been seen, and that footsteps on the earth around these places produced a hollow sound.

From these signs, taken together, the Captain had concluded that the life of the mines, the great infernal fire that raged beneath the surface, was changing ground, leaving the valley, where it had lived for ages, for the mountain heights, where the low grumblings were now heard to come from beneath the earth's crust of lava and basaltic rock.

So, taking counsel of his people, he decided to bore the ground in these new places in the hope of lighting on living solfataras that would stand to him against the loss of the dead ones. And it chanced that he was in the midst of many busy preparations for this work when the report of the warders reached him, and the boring was still uppermost in his mind when he sent back his answer as he came upon the flogging and stopped it.

Thus it happened that the first thought that came to the warders was to send their prisoners to one of the spots that had been marked on the hillside for the test of bore and spade.

So, in less than half-an-hour more, Jason and Sunlocks, lashed together, arm to arm and leg to leg, were being driven up the mountain to the place assigned to them. They found it a hideous and awesome spot. Within a circle of two yards across, the ground was white and yellow and scaly, like a scab on evil flesh. It was hot, so that the hand could not rest upon it, and hollow, so that the foot made it shake, and from unseen depths beneath it a dull thud came up at intervals like nothing else but the knocking of a man buried alive at the sealed door of his tomb.

Beneath this spot the heart of the solfatara was expected to lie, and Jason and Sunlocks were commanded to open it. Obeying gloomily, they took the bore first and pierced the scaly surface, and instantly a sizzling and bubbling sound came up from below. Then they followed with the spades, but scarcely had they lifted the top crust when twenty great fissures seemed to open under their feet, and they could see lurid flames rushing in wild confusion, like rivers of fire in the bowels of the earth.

It was a sight at which the stoutest heart might have quailed, and Jason leapt back to the bank and dragged Sunlocks after him.

"This is not safe," he said.

"In with you," shouted the warders from their own safe footing of four yards away. With a growl from between his clenched teeth, Jason stepped back into the hole, and Sunlocks followed him. But hardly had they got down to the fearsome spot again, when a layer of clay fell in from it, leaving a deep wide gully, and then scarcely a yard of secure footing remained.

"Let us stop while we are safe," Jason cried.

"Dig away," shouted the warders.

"If we do, we shall be digging our own graves," said Jason.

"Begin," shouted the warders.

"Listen to me," said Jason. "If we are to open this pit of fire and brimstone, at least let us be free of these ropes. That's but fair, that each man may have a chance of his life."

"Go on," shouted the warders.

"If we go on like this we shall be burnt and boiled alive," said Jason.

"Get along," shouted the warders with one voice, and then an awful light flashed in Jason's eyes, for he saw that out of revenge for their paltry fines they had resolved to drive two living men to their death.

"Now, listen again," said Jason, "and mark my words. We will do as you command us, and work in this pit of hell. I will not die in it—that I know. But this man beside me is weak and ill, heaven curse your inhumanity; and if anything happens to him, and I am alive to see it, as sure as there is strength left in my arms, and blood in my body, I will tear you limb from limb."

So saying, he plunged his spade into the ground beneath him, with an oath to drive it, and at the next instant there was a flash of blue flame, an avalanche of smoke, a hurricane of unearthly noises, a cry like that of a dying man, and then an awful silence.

When the air had cleared, Jason stood uninjured, but Michael Sunlocks hung by his side inert and quiet, and blinded by a jet of steam.

What happened to Jason thereafter no tongue of man could tell. All the fire of his spirit, and all the strength of all his days seemed to flow back upon him in that great moment. He parted the ropes that bound him as if they had been green withes that he snapped asunder. He took Sunlocks in his arms and lifted him up to his shoulder, and hung him across it, as if he had been a child that he placed there. He stepped out of the deadly pit, and strode along over the lava mountain as if he were the sole creature of the everlasting hills. His glance was terrific, his voice was the voice of a wounded beast. The warders dropped their muskets and fled before him like affrighted sheep.

---

CHAPTER IV.
Through the Chasm of All Men.

It was still early morning; a soft gray mist lay over the moorlands, but the sun that had never set in that northern land was rising through clouds of pink and white over the bald crown of a mountain to the northeast. And towards the rising sun Jason made his way, striding on with the red glow on his own tanned and blackened face, and its ghastly mockery of the hues of life on the pallid cheeks and whitened lips of Sunlocks. From his right ankle and right wrist hung the rings of his broken fetters, and from the left ankle and left wrist of Sunlocks trailed the ropes that had bound them both. Never a moment did he pause to breathe or think or question himself. On and on he went, over lava blocks and lava dust, basaltic rock and heavy clay, and hot blue earth and scorched and withered moss. And still Sunlocks lay over his right side and shoulder, motionless and unconscious, hardly breathing, but alive, with his waist encircled by Jason's great right arm, and his waist-belt grasped tight as with the grip of a talon by Jason's hard right hand.

Before long, Sunlocks recovered some partial consciousness and cried in a faint voice for water. Jason glanced around on the arid plain as if his eyes would pierce the ground for a spring, but no water could he see on any side of him, and so without a word of answer he strode along.

"Water, water," cried Sunlocks again, and just then Jason caught the side-long glint of a river that ran like a pearl chain down the black breast of a mountain.

"Water," cried Sunlocks again and yet again, in a voice of pain and deep pleading, not rightly knowing yet where he was or what bad chance had befallen him.

"Yes, yes, one moment more, only a moment, there—there—there!" whispered Jason.

And muttering such words of comfort and cheer, he quickened his pace towards the river. But when he got near to it he stopped short with a cry of dismay. The river bubbled and smoked.

"Hot! It is hot," cried Jason. "And the land is accursed."

At that word, Sunlocks uttered a low groan, and his head, which had been partly lifted, fell heavily backwards, and his hair hung over Jason's shoulder. He was again unconscious.

Then more than ever like a wild beast ranging the hills with its prey, Jason strode along. And presently he saw a lake of blue water far away. He knew it for cold water, blessed, ice-cold water, water to bathe the hot forehead with, water to drink. With a cry of joy, which there was no human ear to hear, he turned and made towards it; but just as he did so, softening as he went, and muttering from his own parched throat words of hope and comfort to the unconscious man he carried, a gunshot echoed through the mountains above his head.

He knew what the shot was; it was the signal of his escape. And looking down to the valley, he saw that the guards of the settlement were gathering on their ponies in the very line of the plain that he must traverse to reach the water for which Sunlocks thirsted.

Then "Water, water," came again in the same faint voice as before, and whether with his actual ear he heard that cry, or in the torment of his distraught sense it only rang out in his empty heart, no man shall say. But all the same he answered it from his choking throat, "Patience, patience."

And then, with another look downward, the look of a human stag, at the cool water which he might not reach and live, he turned himself back to the mountains.

What happened to him then, and for many weary hours thereafter, it would weary the spirit to tell: what plains he crossed, what hills he climbed, and in what desolate wilderness he walked alone, with no one for company save the unconscious man across his shoulder, and no eye to look upon him save the eye of God.

And first he crossed a wide sea of lava dust, black as the ravens that flew in the air above it, and bounded by hills as dark as the earth that were themselves vast sand drifts blown up into strange and terrible shapes by mighty tempests. Then he came upon a plain strewn over with cinders, having a grim crag frowning upon it, like the bank of a smelting-house, with its screes of refuse rolling down. By this time the sun had risen high and grown hot, and the black ground under his feet began to send up the reflection of the sun's rays into his face to scorch it.

And still the cry of "water, water," rang in his ears, and his eyes ranged the desolate land to find it, but never a sign of it could he see, and his strong heart sank. Once, when he had mounted with great toil to the top of a hill, where all behind him had been black and burnt and blistered, he saw a wide valley stretching in front of him that was as green as the grass of spring. And he thought that where there was grass there would surely be water, streams of water, rivers of water, pools of water, sunny stretches of sweet water lying clear and quiet over amber pebbles and between soft brown banks of turf.

So at this sight his heart was lifted up, and bounding down the hillside, over the lava blocks, as fast as he could go for his burden, he began to sing from his cracked throat in his hoarse and quavery voice. But when he reached the valley his song stopped, and his heart sank afresh, for it was not grass, but moss that grew there, and it lay only on big blocks of lava, with never a drop of moisture or a handful of earth between them.

He was crushed, but he was strong of heart and would not despair. So he pushed on over this green plain, through a hundred thousand mossy mounds that looked like the graves of a world of dead men.

But when he came out of it his case seemed yet more forlorn, for leaving the soft valley behind he had come upon a lava stream, a sea of stones, not dust or cinders, but a bleached cake of lava rock, with never a soft place for the foot, and never a green spot for the eye. Not a leaf to rustle in the breeze, not a blade of grass to whisper to it, not a bird's sweet voice, or the song of running water. Nothing lived there but dead silence on earth and in air. Nothing but that, or in other hours the roar of wind, the rattle of rain, and the crash of thunder.

All this time Jason had walked on under the sweltering sun, never resting, never pausing, buoyed up with the hope of water—water for the fainting man that he might not die. But in the desolation of that moment he dropped Sunlocks from his shoulder, and threw himself down beside him.

And sitting there, with the head of his unconscious comrade upon his knees, he put it himself to say what had been the good of all that he had done, and if it would not have been better for both of them if he had submitted to base tyranny and remained at the Mines. Had he not brought this man out to his death? What else was before him in this waste wilderness, where there was no drop of water to cool his hot forehead or moisten his parched tongue? And thinking that his yoke-fellow might die, and die at his hands, and that he would then be alone, with the only man's face gone from him that had ever brightened life for him, his heart began to waver and to say, "Rise up, Jason, rise up and go back."

But just then he was conscious of the click-clack of horses' hoofs on the echoing face of the stony sea about him, and he shaded his eyes and looked around, and saw in the distance a line of men on ponies coming on in his direction. And though he thought of the guards that had been signalled to pursue him, he made no effort to escape. He did not stir or try to hide himself, but sat as before with the head of his comrade on his knees.

The men on the ponies came up and passed him closely by without seeing him. But he saw them clearly and heard their talk. They were not the guard from the settlement, but Thing-men bound for Thingvellir and the meeting of Althing there. And while they were going on before him in their laughter and high spirits, Jason could scarce resist the impulse to cry out on them to stop and take him along with them as their prisoner, for that he was an outlaw who had broken his outlawry, and carried away with him this fainting man at his knees.

But before the words would form themselves, and while his blistering lips were shaping to speak them, a great thought came to him, and struck him back to silence.

Why had he torn away from the Sulphur Mines? Only from a gloomy love of life, life for his comrade, and life for himself. And what life was there in this trackless waste, this mouldering dumb wilderness? None, none. Nothing but death lay here; death in these gaunt solitudes; death in these dry deserts; death amid these ghastly, haggard wrecks of inhuman things. What chance could there be of escape from Iceland? None, none, none.

But there was one hope yet. Who were these men that had passed him? They were Thing-men; they were the lawmakers. Where were they going? They were going to the Mount of Laws. Why were they going there? To hold their meeting of Althing. What was Althing? The highest power of the State; the supreme Court of legislature and law.

What did all this mean? It meant that Jason as an Icelander knew the laws of his country, and that one great law above all other laws he remembered at that instant. It concerned outlaws. And what were they but outlaws, both of them? It ordered that the condemned could appeal at Althing against the injustice of his sentence. If the ranks of the judges opened for his escape, then he was saved.

Jason leaped to his feet at the thought of it. That was what he would do for his comrade and for himself. He would push on to Thingvellir. It was five and thirty heavy miles away; but no matter for that. The angel of hope would walk with him. He would reach the Mount of Laws, carrying his comrade all the way. And when he got there, he would plead the cause of both of them. Then the judges would rise, and part, and make way for them, and they would be free men thereafter.

Life, life, life! There was life left for both of them, and very sweet it seemed after the shadow of death that had so nearly encompassed them. Only to live! Only to live! They were young yet and loved one another as brothers.

And while thinking so, in the whirl of his senses as he strode to and fro over the lava blocks, Jason heard what his ear had hitherto been too heavy to catch, the thin music of falling water near at hand. And, looking up, he saw a tiny rivulet like a lock of silken hair dropping over a round face of rock, and thanking God for it, he ran to it, and filled both hands with it, and brought it to Sunlocks and bathed his forehead with it, and his poor blinded eyes, and moistened his withered lips, whispering meantime words of hope and simple tender nothings, such as any woman might croon over her sick boy.

"Come, boy, come then, come, boy, come," he whispered, and clapped his moist hands together over the placid face to call it back to itself.

And while he did so, sure enough Sunlocks moved, his lips parted, his cheeks quivered, and he sighed. And seeing these signs of consciousness, Jason began to cry, for the great rude fellow who had not flinched before death was touched at the sight of life in that deep place where the strongest man is as a child.

But just then he heard once more the sound of horses' hoofs on the lava ground, and, looking up, he saw that there could be no error this time, and that the guards were surely coming. Ten or twelve of them there seemed to be, mounted on as many ponies, and they were driving on at a furious gallop over the stones. There was a dog racing in front of them, another dog was running at their heels, and with the barking of the dogs, the loud whoops of the men to urge the ponies along, and to the clatter of the ponies' hoofs, the plain rang and echoed.

Jason saw that the guards were coming on in their direction. In three minutes more they would be upon them. They were taking the line followed by the Thing-men. Would they pass them by unseen as the Thing-men had passed them? That was not to be expected, for they were there to look for them. What was to be done? Jason looked behind him. Nothing was there but an implacable wall of stone, rising sheer up into the sky, with never a bough, or tussock of grass to cling to that a man might climb. He looked around. The ground was covered with cracked domes like the arches of buried cities, but the caverns that lay beneath them were guarded by spiked jaws which only a man's foot could slip through. Not a gap, not a hole to creep into; not a stone to crouch under; not a bush to hide behind; nothing in sight on any side but the bare, hard face of the wide sea of stone.

There was not a moment to lose. Jason lifted Sunlocks to his shoulder and crept along, bent nearly double, as silently and swiftly as he could go. And still behind him was the whoop of the men, the barking of the dogs and the clatter of hoofs.

On and on he went, minute after precious minute. The ground became heavier at every stride with huge stones that tore his stockinged legs and mangled his feet in his thin skin shoes. But he recked nothing of this, or rejoiced in it, for the way was as rough for the guards behind him, and he could hear that the horses had been drawn up from their gallop to a slow-paced walk. At each step he scoured the bleak plain for shelter, and at length he saw among piles of vitreous snags a hummock of great slabs clashed together, with one side rent open. It was like nothing else on earth but a tomb in an old burial ground, where the vaults have fallen in and wrecked the monuments above them. Through the cankered lips of this hummock into its gaping throat, Jason pushed the unconscious body of Sunlocks, and crept in after it. And lying there in the gloom he waited for the guards to come on, and as they came he strained his ear to catch the sound of the words that passed between them.

"No, no, we're on the right course," said one voice. How hollow and far away it sounded! "You saw his footmarks on the moss that we've just crossed over, and you'll see them again on the clay we're coming to."

"You're wrong," said another voice, "we saw one man's footsteps only, and we are following two."

"Don't I tell you the red man is carrying the other."

"All these miles? Impossible! Anyhow that's their course, not this."

"Why so?"

"Because they're bound for Hafnafiord."

"Why Hafnafiord?"

"To take ship and clear away."

"Tut, man, they've got bigger game than that. They're going to Reykjavik."

"What! To run into the lion's mouth?"

"Yes, and to draw his teeth, too. What has the Captain always said? Why, that the red man has all along been spy for the fair one, and we know who he is. Let him once set foot in Reykjavik and he'll do over again what he did before."

Crouching over Sunlocks in the darkness of that grim vault, Jason heard these words as the guards rode past him in the glare of the hot sun, and not until they were gone did he draw his breath. But just as he lay back with a sigh of relief, thinking all danger over, suddenly he heard a sound that startled him. It was the sniffing of a dog outside his hiding place, and at the next instant two glittering eyes looked in upon him from the gap whereby he had entered.

The dog growled, and Jason tried to pacify it. It barked, and then Jason laid hold of it, and gripped it about the throat to silence it. It fumed and fought, but Jason held it like a vice, until there came a whistle and a call, and then it struggled afresh.

"Erik!" shouted a voice without. "Erik, Erik!" and then whistle followed whistle.

Thinking the creature would now follow its master, Jason was for releasing it, but before he had yet fully done so the dog growled and barked again.

"Erik! Erik!" shouted the voice outside, and from the click-clack of hoofs Jason judged that one of the men was returning.

Then Jason saw that there was nothing left to him but to quiet the dog, or it would betray them to their death; so, while the brute writhed in his great hands, struggling to tear the flesh from them, he laid hold of its gaping jaws and rived them apart and broke them. In a moment more the dog was dead.

In the silence that followed, a faint voice came from a distance, crying, "Sigurd, Sigurd, why are you waiting!"

And then another voice shouted back from near at hand—very near, so near as to seem to be on top of the hummock, "I've lost the dog; and I could swear I heard him growling somewhere hereabouts not a minute since."

Jason was holding his breath again, when suddenly a deep sigh came from Sunlocks; then another, and another, and then some rambling words that had no meaning, but made a dull hum in that hollow place. The man outside must have heard something, for he called his dog again.

At that Jason's heart fell low, and all he could do he did—he reached over the outstretched form of his comrade, and put his lips to the lips of Sunlocks, just that he might smother their deadly babble with noiseless kisses.

This must have served, for when the voice that was far away shouted again "Sigurd! Sigurd!" the voice that was near at hand answered, "Coming." And a moment later, Jason heard the sounds of hoofs going off from him as before.

Then Michael Sunlocks awoke to full consciousness, and realized his state, and what had befallen him, and where he was, and who was with him. And first he was overwhelmed by a tempest of agony at feeling that he was a lost and forlorn man, blind and maimed, as it seemed at that time, for all the rest of his life to come. After that he cried for water, saying that his throat was baked and his tongue cracked, and Jason replied that all the water they had found that day they had been forced to leave behind them where they could never return to it. Then he poured out a torrent of hot reproaches, calling on Jason to say why he had been brought out there to go mad of thirst; and Jason listened to all and made no answer, but stood with bent head, and quivering lips, and great tear-drops on his rugged cheeks.

The spasm of agony and anger soon passed, as Jason knew it must, and then, full of remorse, Sunlocks saw everything in a new light.

"What time of day is it?" he asked.

"Evening," said Jason.

"How many hours since we left Krisuvik?"

"Ten."

"How many miles from there!"

"Twenty."

"Have you carried me all the way?"

"Yes."

There was a moment's pause, then an audible sob, and then Sunlocks felt for Jason's hand and drew it down to his lips. That kiss was more than Jason could bear, though he bore the hot words well enough; so he made a brave show of unconcern, and rattled on with hopeful talk, saying where they were to go, and what he was to do for both of them, and how they would be free men to-morrow.

And as he talked of the great task that was before them, his heart grew strong again, and Sunlocks caught the contagion of his spirit and cried, "Yes, yes, let us set off. I can walk alone now. Come, let us go."

At that Jason drew Sunlocks out of the hummock, and helped him to his feet.

"You are weak still," he said. "Let me carry you again."

"No, no, I am strong. Give me your hand. That's enough," said Sunlocks.

"Come, then," said Jason, "the guards have gone that way to Reykjavik. It's this way to Thingvellir—over the hill yonder, and through the chasm of All Men, and down by the lake to the Mount of Laws."

Then Jason wound his right arm about the waist of Sunlocks, and Sunlocks rested his left hand on the shoulder of Jason, and so they started out again over that gaunt wilderness that was once a sea of living fire. Bravely they struggled along, with words of courage and good cheer passing between them, and Sunlocks tried to be strong for Jason's sake, and Jason tried to be blind for sake of Sunlocks. If Sunlocks stumbled, Jason pretended not to know it, though his strong arm bore him up, and when Jason spoke of water and said they would soon come to a whole lake of it, Sunlocks pretended that he was no longer thirsty. Thus, like little children playing at make-believe, they tottered on, side by side, arm through arm, yoked together by a bond far tighter than ever bound them before, for the love that was their weakness was God's own strength.

But no power of spirit could take the place of power of body, and Sunlocks grew faint and very feeble.

"Is the sun still shining?" he asked at one time.

"Yes," said Jason.

Whereupon Sunlocks added, sadly, "And I am blind—blind—blind."

"Courage," whispered Jason, "the lake is yonder. I can see it plainly. We'll have water soon."

"It's not that," said Sunlocks, "but something else that troubles me."

"What else?" said Jason.

"That I'm blind, and sick, and have a broken hand, a broken heart, and a broken brain, and am not worth saving."

"Lean heavier on my shoulder, and wind your arm about my neck," whispered Jason.

Sunlocks struggled on a little longer, and then the power of life fell low in him, and he could walk no farther. "Let me go," he said, "I will lie down here a while."

And when Jason had dropped him gently to the ground, thinking he meant to rest a little and then continue his journey, Sunlocks said, very gently:

"Now, save yourself. I am only a burden to you. Escape, or you will be captured and taken back."

"What?" cried Jason, "and leave you here to die?"

"That may be my fate in any case," said Sunlocks faintly, "so go, brother—go—farewell—and God bless you!"

"Courage," whispered Jason again. "I know a farm not far away, and the good man that keeps it. He will give us milk and bread; and we'll sleep under his roof to-night, and start afresh in the morning."

But the passionate voice fell on a deaf ear, for Sunlocks was unconscious before half the words were spoken. Then Jason lifted him to his shoulder once more, and set out for the third time over the rocky waste.

It would be a weary task to tell of the adventures that afterwards befell him. In the fading sunlight of that day he crossed trackless places, void of any sound or sight of life; silent, save for the hoarse croak of the raven; without sign of human foregoer, except some pyramidal heaps of stones, that once served as mournful sentinels to point the human scapegoat to the cities of refuge.

He came up to the lake and saw that it was poisonous, for the plovers that flew over it fell dead from its fumes; and when he reached the farm he found it a ruin, the good farmer gone, and his hearth cold. He toiled through mud and boggy places, and crossed narrow bridle paths along perpendicular sides of precipices. The night came on as he walked, the short night of that northern summer, where the sun never sets in blessed darkness that weary eyes may close in sleep, but a blood-red glow burns an hour in the northern sky at midnight, and then the bright light rises again over the unrested world. He was faint for bread, and athirst for water, but still he struggled on—on—on—on—over the dismal chaos.

Sometimes when the pang of thirst was strongest he remembered what he had heard of the madness that comes of it—that the afflicted man walks round in a narrow circle, round and round over the self-same place (as if the devil's bridle bound him like an unbroken horse) until nature fails and he faints and falls. Yet thinking of himself so, in that weary spot, with Sunlocks over him, he shuddered, but took heart of strength and struggled on.

And all this time Sunlocks lay inert and lifeless on his shoulder, in a deep unconsciousness that was broken by two moments only of complete sensibility. In the first of these he said:

"I must have been dreaming, for I thought I had found my brother."

"Your brother?" said Jason.

"Yes, my brother; for I have got one, though I have never seen him," said Sunlocks. "We were not together in childhood, as other brothers are, but when we grew to be men I set out in search of him. I thought I had found him at last—but it was in hell."

"God-a-mercy!" cried Jason.

"And when I looked at him," said Sunlocks, "it seemed to me that he was you. Yes, you; for he had the face of my yoke-fellow at the Mines. I thought you were my brother indeed."

"Lie still, brother," whispered Jason; "lie still and rest."

In the second moment of his consciousness Sunlocks said, "Do you think the judges will listen to us?"

"They must—they shall," said Jason.

"But the Governor himself may be one of them," said Sunlocks.

"What matter?" said Jason.

"He is a hard man—do you know who he is?"

"No," said Jason; but he added, quickly, "Wait! Ah, now I remember. Will he be there?"

"Yes."

"So much the better."

"Why?" said Sunlocks.

And Jason answered, with heat and flame of voice, "Because I hate and loathe him."

"Has he wronged you also?" said Sunlocks.

"Yes," said Jason, "and I have waited and watched five years to requite him."

"Have you never yet met with him?"

"Never! But I'll see him now. And if he denies me this justice, I'll——"

"What?"

At that he paused, and then said quickly, "No matter."

But Sunlocks understood and said, "God forbid it."

Half an hour later, Red Jason, still carrying Michael Sunlocks, was passing through the chasm of All Men, a grand, gloomy diabolical fissure opening into the valley of Thingvellir. It was morning of the day following his escape from the Sulphur Mines of Krisuvik. The air was clear, the sun was bright, and a dull sound, such as the sea makes when far away, came up from the plain below. It was a deep multitudinous hum of many voices. Jason heard it, and his heavy face lightened with the vividness of a grim joy.

---

CHAPTER V.
The Mount of Laws.

I.

And now, that we may stride on the faster, we must step back a pace or two. What happened to Greeba after she parted from her father at Krisuvik, and took up her employment as nurse to the sick prisoners, we partly know already from the history of Red Jason and Michael Sunlocks. Accused of unchastity, she was turned away from the hospital; and suspected of collusion to effect the escape of some prisoner unrecognized, she was ordered to leave the neighborhood of the Sulphur Mines. But where her affections are at stake a woman's wit is more than a match for a man's cunning, and Greeba contrived to remain at Krisuvik. For her material needs she still had the larger part of the money that her brothers, in their scheming selfishness, had brought her, and she had her child to cheer her solitude. It was a boy, unchristened as yet, save in the secret place of her heart, where it bore a name that she dare not speak. And if its life was her shame in the eyes of the good folk who gave her shelter, it was a dear and sweet dishonor, for well she knew and loved to remember that one word from her would turn it to glory and to joy.

"If only I dare tell," she would whisper into her babe's ear again and again. "If I only dare!"

But its father's name she never uttered, and so with pride for her secret, and honor for her disgrace, she clung the closer to both, though they were sometimes hard to bear, and she thought a thousand times they were a loving and true revenge on him that had doubted her love and told her she had married him for the poor glory of his place.

Not daring to let herself be seen within range of the Sulphur Mines, she sought out the prisoner-priest from time to time, where he lived in the partial liberty of the Free Command, and learned from him such tidings of her husband as came his way. The good man knew nothing of the identity of Michael Sunlocks in that world of bondage where all identity was lost, save that A 25 was the husband of the woman who waited without. But that was Greeba's sole secret, and the true soul kept it.

And so the long winter passed, and the summer came, and Greeba was content to live by the side of Sunlocks, content to breathe the air he breathed, to have the same sky above her, to share the same sunshine and the same rain, only repining when she remembered that while she was looking for love into the eyes of their child, he was slaving like a beast of burden; but waiting, waiting, waiting, withal for the chance—she knew not what—that must release him yet, she knew not when.

Her great hour came at length, but an awful blow came with it. One day the prisoner-priest hurried up to the farm where she lived, and said, "I have sad news for you; forgive me; prisoner A25 has met with an accident."

She did not stay to hear more, but with her child in her arms she hurried away to the Mines, and there in the tempest of her trouble the secret of months went to the winds in an instant.

"Where is he?" she cried. "Let me see him. He is my husband."

"Your husband!" said the warders, and without more ado they laid hands upon her and carried her off to their Captain.

"This woman," they said, "turns out to be the wife of A25."

"As I suspected," the Captain answered.

"Where is my husband?" Greeba cried. "What accident has befallen him? Take me to him."

"First tell me why you came to this place," said the Captain.

"To be near my husband," said Greeba.

"Nothing else?"

"Nothing."

"Who is this other man?" asked the Captain.

"What man?" said Greeba.

Then they told her that her husband was gone, having been carried off by a fellow-prisoner who had effected the escape of both of them.

"Escaped!" cried Greeba, with a look of bewilderment, glancing from face to face of the men about her. "Then it is not true that he has met with an accident. Thank God, oh! thank God!" And she clutched her child closer to her breast, and kissed it.

"We know nothing of that either way," said the Captain. "But tell us who and what is this other man? His number here was B25. His name is Jason."

At that, Greeba gazed up again with a terrified look of inquiry.

"Jason?" she cried.

"Yes, who is he?" the Captain asked.

And Greeba answered, after a pause, "His own brother."

"We might have thought as much," said the Captain.

There was another pause, and then Greeba said, "Yes, his own brother, who has followed him all his life to kill him."

The Captain smiled upon his warders and said, "It didn't look like it, madam."

"But it is true," said Greeba.

"He has been your husband's best friend," said the Captain.

"He is my husband's worst enemy," said Greeba.

"He has carried him off, I tell you," said the Captain.

"Then it is only that he may have his wicked will of him," said Greeba. "Ah, sir, you will tell me I don't know what I'm saying. But I know too well. It was for attempting my husband's life that Jason was sent to this place. That was before your time; but look and see if I speak the truth. Now I know it is false that my husband is only injured. Would he were! Would he were! Yet, what am I saying? Mercy me, what am I saying? But, only think, he has been carried off to his death. I know he has—I am sure he has; and better, a thousand thousand times better, that he should be here, however injured, with me to nurse him! But what am I saying again? Indeed, I don't know what I am saying. Oh, sir, forgive me; and heaven forgive me, also. But send after that man. Send instantly. Don't lose an hour more. Oh, believe me, sir, trust me, sir, for I am a broken-hearted woman; and why should I not speak the truth?"

"All this is very strange," said the Captain. "But set your mind at ease about the man Jason. The guards have already gone in pursuit of him, and he cannot escape. It is not for me to say your story is not true, though the facts, as we know them, discredit it. But, true or not, you shall tell it to the Governor as you have told it to me, so prepare to leave Krisuvik immediately."

And in less than an hour more Greeba was riding between two of the guards towards the valley of Thingvellir.

II.

Jorgen Jorgensen had thrice hardened his heart against Michael Sunlocks: first, when he pushed Sunlocks into Althing, and found his selfish ends were not thereby in the way of advancement; next, when he fell from his place and Sunlocks took possession of it; again, when he regained his stool and Sunlocks was condemned to the Sulphur Mines. But most of all he hated Sunlocks when old Adam Fairbrother came to Reykjavik and demanded for him, as an English subject, the benefit of judge and jury.

"We know of no jury here," said Jorgen; "and English subject or not English subject, this man has offended against the laws of Denmark."

"Then the laws of Denmark shall condemn him," said Adam, bravely, "and not the caprice of a tyrant governor."

"Keep a civil tongue in your old head, sir," said Jorgen, "or you may learn to your cost how far that caprice can go."

"I care nothing for your threats, sir," said Adam, "and I mean to accuse you before your master."

"Do your worst," said Jorgen, "and take care how you do it."

And at first Adam's worst seemed likely to be little, for hardly had he set foot in Reykjavik when he was brought front to front with the material difficulty that the few pounds with which he had set out were spent. Money was justice, and justice money, on that rock of the sea, as elsewhere, and on the horns of his dilemma, Adam bethought him to write to his late master, the Duke of Athol, explaining his position, and asking for the loan of fifty pounds. A long month passed before he got back his answer. The old Duke sent forty pounds as a remonstrance against Adam's improvidence, and stern counsel to him to return forthwith to the homes of his children. In the meantime the old Bishop, out of love of Michael Sunlocks and sympathy with Greeba, had taken Adam into his house at Reykjavik. From there old Adam had sent petitions to the Minister at Copenhagen, petitions to the Danish Rigsdag, and finally petitions to the Danish King. His reward had been small, for no justice, or promise of justice, could he get.

But Jorgen Jorgensen had sat no easier on his seat for Adam's zealous efforts. He had been hurried out of his peace by Government inquiries, and terrified by Government threats. But he had wriggled, he had lied, he had used subterfuge after subterfuge, and so pushed on the evil day of final reckoning.

And while his hoary head lay ill at ease because of the troubles that came from Copenhagen, the gorge of his stomach rose at the bitter waters he was made to drink at Reykjavik. He heard the name of Michael Sunlocks on every lip, as a name of honor, a name of affection, a name to conjure with whenever and wherever men talked of high talents, justice, honor and truth.

Jorgen perceived that the people of Iceland had recovered from the first surprise and suspicion that followed on the fall of their Republic, and no longer saw Michael Sunlocks as their betrayer, but had begun to regard him as their martyr. They loved him still. If their hour ever came they would restore him. On the other hand, Jorgen realized that he himself was hated where he was not despised, jeered at where he was not feared, and that the men whom he had counted upon because he had bought them with the places in his gift, smiled loftily upon him as upon one who had fallen on his second childhood. And so Jorgen Jorgensen hardened his heart against Michael Sunlocks, and vowed that the Sulphur Mines of Krisuvik should see the worst and last of him.

He heard of Jason, too, that he was not dead, as they had supposed, but alive, and that he had been sent to the Mines for attempting the life of Sunlocks. That attempt seemed to him to come of a natural passion, and as often as he spoke of it he warmed up visibly, not out of any human tenderness towards Jason, but with a sense of wild triumph over Sunlocks. And the more he thought of Jason, the firmer grew his resolve to take him out of the Sulphur Mines and place him by his side, not that his old age needed a stay, not that he was a lonely old man, and Jason was his daughter's son, but only because Jason hated Sunlocks and would crush him if by chance he rose again.

With such thoughts uppermost he went down to Krisuvik, and there his bitter purpose met with a shock. He found Jason the sole ally of Michael Sunlocks, his friend, his defender and champion against tyranny. It was then that he ordered the ruthless punishment of Sunlocks, that he should be nailed by his right hand to a log of driftwood, with meat and drink within sight but out of reach of him, and a huge knife by his side. And when Jason had liberated Sunlocks from this inhuman cruelty, and the two men, dearest foes and deadliest friends, were brought before him for their punishment, the gall of Jorgen's fate seemed to suffocate him. "Strap them up together," he cried, "leg to leg and arm to arm." Thus he thought to turn their love to hate; but he kept his own counsel, and left the Sulphur Mines without saying what evil dream had brought him there, or confessing to his Danish officers the relation wherein this other prisoner stood to him, for secrecy is the chain-armor of the tyrant.

Back in Reykjavik he comforted himself with the assurance that Michael Sunlocks must die. "There was death in his face," he thought, "and he cannot last a month longer. Besides, he will fall to fighting with the other, and the other will surely kill him. Blind fools, both of them!"

In this mood he made ready for Thingvellir, and set out with all his people. Since the revolution, he had kept a bodyguard of five and twenty men, and with this following he was crossing the slope of the Basket Hill, behind the capital, when he saw half a score of the guards from Krisuvik riding at a gallop from the direction of Hafnafiord. They were the men who had been sent in pursuit of Red Jason and Michael Sunlocks, the same that had passed them in the hummock, where the carcase of the dog still lay.

Then Jorgen Jorgensen received news that terrified him.

Michael Sunlocks had escaped, and Red Jason had escaped with him. They had not been seen at Hafnafiord, and no ship had set sail from there since yesterday. Never a trace of them had been found on any of the paths from Krisuvik, and it was certain that they must be in the interior still. Would his Excellency lend them ten men more to scour the country?

Such was the message of the guards, and at hearing it Jorgen's anger and fear overmastered him.

"Fools! Blockheads! Asses!" he cried. "The man is making for Reykjavik. He knows what he is doing if you do not. Is not this the time of Althing, and must I not leave Reykjavik for Thingvellir? He is making for Reykjavik now! Once let him set foot there, and these damned Icelanders will rise at the sight of him. Then you may scour the country till you fall dead and turn black, and he will only laugh at the sight of you. Back, you blockheads, back! Back to Reykjavik, every man of you! And I am going back with you."

Thus driven by his frantic terror, Jorgen Jorgensen returned to the capital and searched every house and hovel, every hole and sty, for the two fugitives; and when he had satisfied himself that they were not anywhere within range of Reykjavik, his fears remembered Thingvellir, and what mischief might be going forward in his absence. So next day he left his body-guard with the guard from Krisuvik to watch the capital, and set out alone for the Mount of Laws.

III.

The lonely valley of Thingvellir was alive that morning with a great throng of people. They came from the west by the Chasm of All Men, from the east by the Chasm of Ravens, and from the south by the lake. Troop after troop flowed into the vast amphitheatre that lies between dark hills and great jokulls tipped with snow. They pitched their tents on the green patch, under the fells to the north, and tying their ponies together, head to tail, they turned them loose to graze. Hundreds of tents were there by early morning, gleaming white in the sunlight, and tens of hundreds of ponies, shaggy and unkempt, grubbed among the short grass that grew between.

Near the middle of the plain stood the Mount of Laws, a lava island of oval shape, surrounded by a narrow stream, and bounded by overhanging walls cut deep with fissures. Around this mount the people gathered. There friend met friend, foe met foe, rival met rival, northmen met southmen, the Westmann islander met the Grimsey islander, and the man from Seydisfiord met the man from Patriksfiord. And because Althing gathered only every other year, many musty kisses went round, with snuffboxes after them, among those who had not met before for two long years.

It was a vast assembly, chiefly of men, in their homespun and sheepskins and woollen stockings, cross-gartered with hemp from ankle to knee. Women, too, and young girls and children were there, all wearing their Sunday best. And in those first minutes of their meeting, before Althing began, the talk was of crops and stock, of the weather, and of what sheep had been lost in the last two hard winters. The day had opened brightly, with clear air and bright sunshine, but the blue sky had soon become overcast with threatening clouds, and this lead to stories of strange signs in the heavens, and unaccustomed noises on the earth and under it.

A man from the south spoke of rain of black dust as having fallen three nights before until the ground was covered deep with it. Another man, from the foot of Hekla, told of a shock of earthquake that had lately been felt there, travelling northeast to southwest. A third man spoke of grazing his horse on the wild oats of a glen that he had passed through, with a line of some twenty columns of smoke burst suddenly upon his view. All this seemed to pass from lip to lip in the twinkling of an eye, and when young men asked what the signs might mean, old men lifted both hands and shook their heads, and prayed that the visitations which their island had seen before might never come to it again.

Such was the talk, and such the mood of the people when the hour arrived for the business of Althing to begin, and then all eyes turned to the little wooden Thing House by the side of the church, wherein the Thing-men were wont to gather for their procession to the Mount of Laws. And when the hour passed, and the procession had not yet appeared, the whisper went around that the Governor had not arrived, and that the delay was meant to humor him. At that the people began to mutter among themselves, for the slumbering fire of their national spirit had been stirred. By his tardy coming the Governor meant to humiliate them! But, Governor or no Governor, let Althing begin its sitting. Who was the Governor that Althing should wait for him? What was Althing that it should submit to the whim or the will of any Governor?

Within the Thing House, as well as outside of it, such hot protests must have had sway, for presently the door of the little place was thrown open and the six and thirty Thing-men came out.

Then followed the solemn ceremonies that had been observed on the spot for nigh a thousand years. First walked the Chief Judge, carrying the sword of justice, and behind him walked his magistrates and Thing-men. They ascended to the Mount by a flight of steps cut out of its overhanging walls. At the same moment another procession, that of the old Bishop and his clergy, came out of the church and ascended to the Mount by a similar flight of steps cut out of the opposite side of it. The two companies parted, the Thing-men to the north and the clergy to the south, leaving the line of this natural causeway open and free, save for the Judge, who stood at the head of it, with the Bishop to the right of him and the Governor's empty place to the left.

And first the Bishop offered prayer for the sitting of Althing that was then to begin.

"Thou Judge of Israel," he prayed, in the terrible words which had descended to him through centuries, "Thou that sittest upon the cherubims, come down and help Thy people. O, most mighty God, who art more pleased with the sacrifice of thanksgiving than with the burnt offerings of bullocks and goats, keep now our mouths from guile and deceit, from slander and from obloquy. O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, endue Thy ministers with righteousness. Give them wisdom that they may judge wisely. Give them mercy that they may judge mercifully. Let them judge this nation as Thou wilt judge Thy people. Let them remember that he who takes the name of justice for his own profit or hatred or revenge is worse than the vulture that watches for the carcase. Let them not forget that howsoever high they stand or proudly they bear themselves, nothing shall they take from hence but the oak for their coffin. Let them be sure that when Thou shalt appear with a consuming fire before Thee and a tempest round about Thee, calling the heaven and the earth together, no portion can they have in that day like to the portion of thine inheritance."

The fierce prayer came to an end, and then the Judge, holding his sword erect, read his charge and repeated his oath, to deal justly between man and man, even as the sword stood upright before him. And the vast assembly of rude men in sheepskins and in homespun looked on and listened, all silent and solemn, all worshipful of law and reverent of its forms.

The oath being taken, the Judge had laid the sword aside and begun to promulgate the new laws, reading them clause by clause, first in Icelandic and then in Danish, when there was an uneasy movement at the outskirts of the crowd to the west of the Mount.

"The Governor," whispered one. "It's himself," muttered another. "He's here at last," murmured a third, and dark were the faces turned round to see. It was the Governor, indeed, and he pushed his way through the closely-packed people, who saw him coming, but stood together like a wall until riven apart by his pony's feet. At the causeway he dismounted and stepped up to the top of the Mount. He looked old and feeble and torn by evil passions; his straight gray hair hung like a blasted sheaf on to his shoulders, his forehead was blistered with blue veins, his cheeks were guttered with wrinkles, his little eyes were cruel, his jaw was broad and heavy, and his mouth was hard and square.

The Judge made him no obeisance, but went on with his reading. The Bishop seemed not to see him, but gazed steadfastly forward. The Thing-men gave no sign.

He stood a moment, and looked around, and the people below could see his wrath rising like a white hand across his haggard face. Then he interrupted and said, "Chief Justice, I have something to say."

All heard the words, and the Speaker stopped, and, amid the breathless silence of the people, he answered quietly, "There will be a time and a place for that, your Excellency."

"The time is now, and the place is here," cried Jorgen Jorgensen, in a tense voice, and quivering with anger. "Listen to me. The rebel and traitor who once usurped the government of this island has escaped."

"Escaped!" cried a hundred voices.

"Michael Sunlocks!" cried as many more.

And a wave of excitement passed over the vast assembly.

"Yes, Michael Sunlocks has escaped," cried Jorgen Jorgensen. "That scoundrel is at liberty. He is free to do his wicked work again. Men of Iceland, I call on you to help me. I call on you to help the Crown of Denmark. The traitor must be taken. I call on you to take him."

A deep murmur ran through the closely-pressed people.

"You've got your guards," shouted a voice from below. "Why do you come to us?"

"Because," cried Jorgen Jorgensen, "my guards are protecting Reykjavik, and because they might scour your island a hundred years and never find what they looked for."

"Thank God!" muttered another voice from below.

"But you know it, every fell and fiord," cried Jorgen Jorgensen, "and never a toad could skulk under a stone but you would root him out of it. Chief Justice," he added, sweeping about, "I have a request to make of you."

"What is it, your Excellency?" said the Judge.

"That you should adjourn this Althing so that every man here present may go out in search of the traitor."

Then a loud involuntary murmur of dissent rose from the people, and at the same moment the Judge said in bewilderment, "What can your Excellency mean?"

"I mean," cried Jorgen Jorgensen, "that if you adjourn this Althing for three days, the traitor will be taken. If not, he will be at liberty as many years. Will you do it?"

"Your Excellency," said the Judge, "Althing has lived nigh upon a thousand years, and every other year for that thousand years it has met on this ancient ground, but never once since it began has the thing you ask been done."

"Let it be done now," cried Jorgen Jorgensen. "Will you do it?"

"We will do our duty by your Excellency," said the Judge, "and we will expect your Excellency to do your duty by us."

"But this man is a traitor," cried Jorgen Jorgensen, "and it is your duty to help me to capture him. Will you do it?"

"And this day is ours by ancient right and custom," said the Judge, "and it is your duty to stand aside."

"I am here for the King of Denmark," cried Jorgen Jorgensen, "and I ask you to adjourn this Althing. Will you do it?"

"And we are here for the people of Iceland," said the Judge, "and we ask you to step back and let us go on."

Then Jorgen Jorgensen's anger knew no bounds.

"You are subjects of the King of Denmark," he cried.

"Before ever Denmark was, we were," answered the Judge, proudly.

"And in his name I demand that you adjourn. Will you do it now?" cried Jorgen Jorgensen, with a grin of triumph.

"No," cried the Judge, lifting an undaunted face to the face of Jorgen Jorgensen.

The people held their breath through this clash of words, but at the Judge's brave answer a murmur of approval passed over them. Jorgen Jorgensen heard it, and flinched, but turned back to the Judge and said,

"Take care. If you do not help me, you hinder me; if you are not with me, you are against me. Is that man a traitor? Answer me—yes or no."

But the Judge made no answer, and there was dead silence among the people, for they knew well in what way the cruel question tended.

"Answer me—yes or no," Jorgen Jorgensen cried again.

Then the Bishop broke silence and said,

"Whatever our hearts may be, your Excellency, our tongues must be silent."

At that, Jorgen Jorgensen faced about to the crowd.

"I put a price on his head," he cried. "Two thousand kroner to anyone who takes him, alive or dead. Who will earn it?"

"No Icelander earns money with blood," said the Bishop. "If this thing is our duty, we will do it without pay. If not, no bribe will tempt us."

"Ay, ay," shouted a hundred voices.

Jorgen Jorgensen flinched again, and his face whitened as he grew darker within.

"So, I see how it is," he said, looking steadfastly at the Bishop, the Judge, and the Thing-men. "You are aiding this traitor's escape. You are his allies, every man of you. And you are seducing and deceiving the people."

Then he faced about towards the crowd more and more, and cried in a loud voice:

"Men of Iceland, you know the man who has escaped. You know what he is, and where he came from; you know he is not one of yourselves, but a bastard Englishman. Then drive him back home. Listen to me. What price did I put on his head? Two thousand kroner! I will give ten thousand! Ten thousand kroner for the man who takes him alive, and twenty thousand kroner—do you hear me?—twenty thousand for the man who takes him dead."

"Silence!" cried the Bishop. "Who are you, sir, that you dare tempt men to murder?"

"Murder!" cried Jorgen Jorgensen. "See how simple are the wise? Men of Iceland, listen to me again. The traitor is an outlaw. You know what that means. His blood is on his own head. Any man may shoot him down. No man may be called to account for doing so. Do you hear me? It is the law of Iceland, the law of Denmark, the law of the world. He is an outlaw, and killing him is no murder. Follow him up! Twenty thousand kroner to the man who lays him at my feet."

He would have said more, for he was heaving with passion, and his white face had grown purple, but his tongue seemed suddenly paralyzed, and his wide eyes fixed themselves on something at the outskirts of the crowd. One thin and wrinkled hand he lifted up and pointed tremblingly over the heads of the people. "There!" he said in a smothered cry, and after that he was silent.

The crowd shifted and looked round, amid a deep murmur of surprise and expectation. Then by one of the involuntary impulses that move great assemblies, the solid wall of human beings seemed to part of itself, and make a way for someone.

It was Red Jason, carrying Michael Sunlocks across his breast and shoulder. His bronzed cheeks were worn, his sunken eyes burned with a dull fire. He strode on, erect and strong, through the riven way of men and women. A breathless silence seemed to follow him. When he came to the foot of the Mount, he stopped, and let Sunlocks drop gently to the ground. Sunlocks was insensible, and his piteous white face looked up at the heavy dome of the sky. A sensation of awe held the vast crowd spellbound. It was as if the Almighty God had heard the blasphemy of that miserable old man, and given him on the instant his impious wish.

IV.

Then, in that breathless silence, Jason stood erect and said, in a firm, clear, sonorous voice, "You know who I am. Some of you hate me. Some of you fear me. All of you think me a sort of wild beast among men. That is why you caged me. But I have broken my bars, and brought this man along with me."

The men on the Mount had not time to breathe under the light and fire that flashed upon them when Jason lifted his clenched hand and said, "O, you that dwell in peace; you that go to your beds at night; you that eat when you are hungry and drink when you are athirst, and rest when you are weary: would to God you could know by bitter proof what this poor man has suffered. But I know it, and I can tell you what it has been. Where is your Michael Sunlocks, that I may tell it to him? Which is he? Point him out to me."

Then the people drew a deep breath, for they saw in an instant what had befallen these two men in the dread shaping of their fate.

"Where is he?" cried Jason, again.

And in a voice quivering with emotion, the Judge said:

"Don't you know the man you've brought here?"

"No—yes—yes," cried Jason. "My brother—my brother in suffering—my brother in misery—that's all I know or care. But where is your Michael Sunlocks? I have something to say to him. Where is he?"

Jorgen Jorgensen had recovered himself by this time, and pressing forward, he said with a cruel smile,

"You fool; shall I tell you where he is?"

"Heaven forbid it!" said the Bishop, stepping out and lifting both hands before the Governor's face. But in that instant Jason had recognized Jorgen Jorgensen.

"I know this old man," he said. "What is he doing here? Ah, God pity me, I had forgotten. I saw him at the mines. Then he is back. And, now I remember, he is Governor again."

Saying this, an agony of bewilderment quivered in his face. He looked around.

"Then where is Michael Sunlocks?" he cried in a loud voice. "Where is he? Which is he? Who is he? Will no one tell me? Speak! For the merciful Christ's sake let some one speak."

There was a moment of silence, in which the vast crowd trembled as one man with wonder and dismay. The Bishop and Judge stood motionless. Jorgen Jorgensen smiled bitterly and shook his head, and Jason raised his right hand to cover his face from the face of the insensible man at his feet, as if some dark foreshadowing of the truth had swept over him in an instant.

What happened thereafter Jason never knew, only that there was a shrill cry and a rustle like a swirl of wind, only that someone was coming up behind him through the walls of human beings, that still stood apart like riven rocks, only that in a moment a woman had flung herself over the prostrate body of his comrade, embracing it, raising it in her arms, kissing its pale cheeks, and sobbing over it, "My husband! my husband."

It was Greeba. When the dark mist had cleared away from before his eyes, Jason saw her and knew her. At the same instant he saw and knew his destiny, that his yoke-fellow had been Michael Sunlocks, that his lifelong enemy had been his life's sole friend.

It was a terrible discovery, and Jason reeled under the shock of it like a beast that is smitten to its death. And while he stood there, half-blind, half-deaf, swaying to and fro as if the earth rocked beneath him, across his shoulders, over his cheeks and his mouth and his eyes fell the lash of the tongue of Jorgen Jorgensen.

"Yes, fool that you are and have been," he cried in his husky voice, "that's where your Michael Sunlocks is."

"Shame! Shame!" cried the people.

But Jorgen Jorgensen showed no pity or ruth.

"You have brought him here to your confusion," he cried again, "and it's not the first time you've taken this part to your own loss."

More he would have said in the merciless cruelty of his heart, only that a deep growl came up from the crowd and silenced him.

But Jason heard nothing, saw nothing, felt nothing, knew nothing, save that Michael Sunlocks lay at his feet, that Greeba knelt beside him, and that she was coaxing him, caressing him, and kissing him back to life.

"Michael," she whispered, "Michael! My poor Michael!" she murmured, while she moistened his lips and parched tongue with the brenni-vin from the horn of some good man standing near.

Jason saw this and heard this, though he had eyes and ears for nothing besides. And thinking, in the wild tumult of his distempered brain, that such tenderness might have been his, should have been his, must have been his, but for this man who had robbed him of this woman, all the bitterness of his poisoned heart rose up to choke him.

He remembered his weary life with this man, his sufferings with him, his love for him, and he hated himself for it all. What devil of hell had made sport of him, to give him his enemy for his friend? How Satan himself must shriek aloud to see it, that he who had been thrice robbed by this man—robbed of a father, robbed of a mother, robbed of a wife—should in his blindness tend him, and nurse him, and carry him with sweat of blood over trackless wastes that he might save him alive for her who waited to claim him!

Then he remembered what he had come for, and that all was not yet done. Should he do it after all? Should he give this man back to this woman? Should he renounce his love and his hate together—his love of this woman, his hate of this man? Love? Hate? Which was love? Which was hate? Ah, God! They were one; they were the same. Heaven pity him, what was he to do?

Thus the powers of good and the powers of evil wrestled together in Jason's heart for mastery. But the moment of their struggle was short. One look at the piteous blind face lying on Greeba's bosom, one glance at the more piteous wet face that hung over it, and love had conquered hate in that big heart forever and forever.

Jason was recalled to himself by a dull hum of words that seemed to be spoken from the Mount. Someone was asking why he had come there, and brought Michael Sunlocks along with him. So he lifted his hand, partly to call attention, partly to steady himself, and in a broken voice he said these words:—

"Men and women, if you could only know what it means that you have just witnessed, I think it would be enough to move any man. You know what I am—a sort of bastard who has never been a man among men, but has walked alone all the days of his life. My father killed my mother, and so I vowed to kill my father. I did not do it, for I saved him out of the sea, and he died in my arms, as you might say, doating on the memory of another son. That son's mother had supplanted my mother and that son himself had supplanted me, so I vowed to kill him for his father's sake. I did not do that neither. I had never once set eyes on my enemy, I had done nothing but say what I meant to do, when you took me and tried me and condemned me. Perhaps that was injustice, such as could have been met with nowhere save here in Iceland, yet I thank God for it now. By what chance I do not know, but in that hell to which you sent me, where all names are lost and no man may know his yoke-fellow, except by his face if he has seen it, I met with one who became my friend, my brother, my second self. I loved him, as one might love a little child. And he loved me—yes, me,—I could swear it. You had thought me a beast, and shut me out from the light of day and the company of Christian men. But he made me a man, and lit up the darkness of my night."

His deep strong voice faltered, and he stopped, and nothing was audible save the excited breathing of the people. Greeba was looking up into his haggard face with amazement written upon her own.

"Must I go on," he cried, in a voice rent with agony. "I have brought him here, and he is Michael Sunlocks. My brother in suffering is my brother in blood. The man I have vowed to slay is the man I have tried to save."

Some of the people could not restrain their tears, and the white faces of the others quivered visibly.

"Why have you brought him here?" asked the Judge.

At that moment Michael Sunlocks began to move and to moan, as if consciousness were coming back to him. Jorgen Jorgensen saw this, and the proud composure with which he had looked on and listened while Sunlocks lay like a man dead left him in an instant.

"Why have you brought Michael Sunlocks here?" said the Judge again.

"Why has he brought him here?" said Jorgen Jorgensen bitterly. "To be arrested. That's why he has brought him here. See, the man is coming to. He will do more mischief yet, unless he is prevented. Take him," he shouted to two of the guards from Krisuvik, who had come with Greeba, and now stood behind her.

"Wait!" cried the Judge, lifting his hand.

There was no gainsaying his voice, and the guards who had stepped forward dropped back.

Then he turned to Jason again and repeated his question, "Why have you brought Michael Sunlocks here?"

At that, Jorgen Jorgensen lost all self-control and shouted, "Take him, I say!" And facing about to the Judge he said, "I will have you know, sir, that I am here for Denmark and must be obeyed."

The guards stepped forward again, but the crowd closed around them and pushed them back.

Seeing this, Jorgen Jorgensen grew purple with rage, and turning to the people, he shouted at the full pitch of his voice, "Listen to me. Some minutes past, I put a price on that man's head. I said I would give you twenty thousand kroner. I was wrong. I will give you nothing but your lives and liberty. You know what that means. You have bent your necks under the yoke already, and you may have to do it again. Arrest that man—arrest both men!"

"Stop!" cried the Judge.

"Those men are escaped prisoners," said Jorgen Jorgensen.

"And this is the Mount of Laws, and here is Althing," said the Judge; "and prisoners or no prisoners, if they have anything to say, by the ancient law of Iceland they may say it now."

"Pshaw! your law of Iceland is nothing to me," said Jorgen Jorgensen, and turning to the crowd he cried, "In the name of the King of Denmark I command you to arrest those men."

"And in the name of the King of Kings," said the Judge, turning after him, "I command you to let them alone."

There was a dead hush for a moment, and then the Judge looked down at Jason and said once more, "Why have you brought Michael Sunlocks here! Speak!"

But before Jason could make answer, Jorgen Jorgensen had broken in again:

"My guards are at Reykjavik," he cried, "and I am here alone. You are traitors, all of you, and if there is no one else to arrest that enemy of my country, I will do it myself. He shall go no further. Step back from him."

So saying, he opened his cloak, drew a pistol from his belt and cocked it. A shrill cry arouse from the crowd. The men on the Mount stood quaking with fear, and Greeba flung herself over the restless body of Michael Sunlocks.

But Jason did not move a feature.

"Old man," he said, looking up with eyes as steadfast as the sun into Jorgensen's face, and pointing towards Sunlocks, "if you touch one hair of this head, these hands will tear you to pieces."

Then one of the men who had stood near, a rough fellow with a big tear-drop rolling down his tanned cheeks, stepped up to Jason's side, and without speaking a word offered him his musket; but Jason calmly pushed it back. There was dead silence once more. Jorgen Jorgensen's uplifted hand fell to his side, and he was speechless.

"Speak now," said the Judge. "Why have you brought Michael Sunlocks here?"

Jason stood silent for a moment as if to brace himself up, and then he said, "I have laid my soul bare to your gaze already, and you know what I am and where I come from."

A low moan seemed to echo him.

"But I, too, am an Icelander, and this is our ancient Mount of Laws, the sacred ground of our fathers and our fathers' fathers for a thousand years."

A deep murmur rose from the vast company.

"And I have heard that if any one is wronged and oppressed and unjustly punished, let him but find his way to this place, and though he be the meanest slave that wipes his forehead, yet he will be a man among you all."

There were loud cries of assent.

"I have also heard that this Mount, on this day, is as the gate of the city in old time, when the judges sat to judge the people; and that he who is permitted to set foot on it, and cross it, though he were as guilty as the outlaws that hide in the desert, is innocent and free forever after. Answer me—is it true? Yes or no?"

"Yes! yes!" came from a thousand throats.

"Then, judges of Iceland, fellow-men and brothers, do you ask why I have brought this man to this place? Look at this bleeding hand." He lifted the right hand of Sunlocks. "It has been pierced with a nail." A deep groan came from the people. He let the hand fall back. "Look at these poor eyes. They are blind. Do you know what that means? It means hellish barbarity and damned tyranny."

His voice swelled until it seemed to shake the very ground on which he stood. "What this man's crime may be I do not know, and I do not care. Let it be what it will, let the man be what he may—a felon like myself, a malefactor, a miscreant, a monster—yet what crime and what condition deserves punishment that is worse than death and hell?"

"None, none," shouted a thousand voices.

"Then, judges of Iceland, fellow-men and brothers, I call on you to save this man from that doom. Save him for his sake—save him for your own, for He that dwells above is looking down on you."

He paused a moment and then cried, "Listen!"

There was a low rumble as of thunder. It came not from the clouds, but from the bowels of the earth. The people turned pallid with dismay, but Jason's face was lit up with a wild frenzy.

"Do you hear it? It is the voice that was heard when these old hills were formed, and the valleys ran like fire. It is the voice of the Almighty God calling on you."

The word was like a war cry. The people answered it with a shout. And still Jason's voice pealed over their heads.

"Vengeance is God's but mercy belongs to man."

He stooped to Michael Sunlocks, where Greeba held him at her bosom, picked him up in his arms as if he had been a child, turned his face towards the Mount and cried, "Let me pass."

Then at one impulse, in one instant, the Judge and the Bishop parted and made a way, and Jason, carrying Sunlocks, strode up the causeway and swept through.

There was but one voice then in all that great assembly, and it was a mighty shout that seemed to rend the dome of the heavy sky. "Free! Free! Free!"

V.

But the end was not yet. More, and more terrible, is to follow, though the spirit is not fain to tell of it, and the hand that sets it down is trembling. Let him who thinks that this world of time is founded in justice, wait long and watch patiently, for up to the eleventh hour he may see the good man sit in misery, and the evil man carried in honor. And let him who thinks that Nature is sweet and benignant and that she leaps to the aid of the just, learn from what is to come that she is all things to all men and nothing to any man.

Now when Jason had crossed the Mount of Laws with Sunlocks, thinking that by virtue of old custom he had thereby set him free of tyranny, Jorgen Jorgensen did what a man of shallow soul must always do when he sees the outward signs of the holy things that move the deeper souls of other men. He smiled with bitterness and laughed with contempt.

"A pretty thing, truly," he sneered, "out of some forgotten age of musty laws and old barbarians. But there is something else that is forgotten. It is forgotten that between these two men, Jason and Michael Sunlocks, there is this difference, that the one is a prisoner of Iceland, and the other of Denmark. Jason is a prisoner of Iceland, a felon of Iceland, therefore Iceland may pardon him, and if this brave mummery has made him free, then so be it, and God pity you! But Michael Sunlocks is a prisoner of Denmark, a traitor against the crown of Denmark, therefore Denmark alone may pardon him—and he is still unpardoned."

The clamorous crowd that had gathered about Michael Sunlocks looked up in silence and bewilderment at this fresh blow. And Jorgen Jorgensen saw his advantage and went on.

"Ask your Lagmann and let him answer you. Is it as I say or is it not? Ask him."

The people looked from face to face of the men on the Mount, from Jorgen Jorgensen to the Judge and from the Judge to the Bishop.

"Is this true?" shouted a voice from the crowd.

But the Judge made no answer, and the Bishop said, "Why all this wrangling over the body of a dying man?"

"Dying indeed!" said Jorgen Jorgensen, and he laughed. "Look at him." Michael Sunlocks, again lying in the arms of Greeba, was showing signs of life. "He will recover fast enough when all is over."

"Is it true?" shouted the same voice from the crowd.

"Yes," said the Judge.

Then the look of bewilderment in the faces of the people deepened to consternation. At that moment Michael Sunlocks was raised to his feet. And Jorgen Jorgensen, standing like an old snuffy tiger on the watch, laughed again, and turning to Jason he pointed at Sunlocks and said, "What did I say? A pretty farce truly, this pretence at unconsciousness. Small good it has done him. And he has little to thank you for. You have brought him here to his death."

What answer Jason would have made him, no man may say, for at that moment the same terrestrial thunder that had been heard before was heard again, and the earth became violently agitated as with a deep pulsation. The people looked into each other's faces with dismay, and scarcely had they realized the horror that waited to pour itself out on the world, when a man came galloping from the south and crying, "The mountains are coming down at Skaptar. Fly! fly!"

They stopped the man and questioned him, and he answered, with terror in his eyes, that the ice-mountain itself was sweeping down into the plain. Then he put his heels to his horse and broke away.

Hardly had the people heard this dread word when another man came galloping from the southwest, and crying, "The sea is throwing up new islands at Reykianess, and all the rivers are dry."

They stopped this man also, and questioned him, and he answered that the sky at the coast was raining red-hot stones, so that the sea hissed with them, and all the land was afire. Then he, too, put his heels to his horse and broke away.

Scarcely had he gone, when a third man came galloping from the southeast, and crying, "The land around Hekla is washed away, and not a green place is left on the face of the earth."

This man also they stopped and questioned, and he answered that a torrent of boiling water was rolling down from the Kotlugia yakul, hurling ice-blocks before it, and sweeping farms, churches, cattle, horses, and men, women, and children into the sea. Then this man also put his heels to his horse and broke away, like one pursued by death itself.

For some moments thereafter the people stood where the men had left them, silent, helpless, unable to think or feel. Then there rose from them all, as from one man, such a shriek of mortal agony as never before came from human breasts. In their terror they ran hither and thither, without thought or intention. They took to their tents, they took to their ponies, they galloped north, they galloped south, they galloped east, they galloped west, and then came scurrying back to the Mount from which they had started. A great danger was about to burst upon them, but they could not tell from what direction it would come. Some remembered their homes and the wives and children they had left there. Others thought only of themselves and of the fire and water that were dealing out death.

In two minutes the Mount was a barren waste, the fissures on its sides were empty, and the seats on the crags were bare. The Thing-men and the clergy were rushing to and fro in the throng, and the old Bishop and the Judge were seeking their horses.

Greeba stood, with fear on her face, by the side of Michael Sunlocks, who, blind and maimed, unable to see what was going on about him, not knowing yet where he was and what new evil threatened him, looked like a man who might have been dead and was awakening to consciousness in a world of the damned.

Two men, and two only, of all that vast multitude, kept their heads and were cool through this mad panic. One of these was Jorgen Jorgensen; the other was Red Jason. They watched each other constantly, the one with the eyes of the lynx, the other with the eyes of a lion.

A troop of men came riding through the throng from the direction of the Chasm of Ravens. Twenty of them were the bodyguard of the Governor, and they pushed their way to the feet of Jorgen Jorgensen.

"Your Excellency," said one of them, "we had news of you that you would want us; so we made bold to come."

"You have come in time," said Jorgen Jorgensen, and his cruel eyes flashed with the light of triumph.

"There has been a great eruption of Skaptar," said the man, "and the people of the south are flocking into Reykjavik."

"Leave old Skaptar to take care of itself," said Jorgen Jorgensen, "and do you take charge of that man there, and the woman beside him."

So saying, he pointed towards Michael Sunlocks, who, amid the whirl of the crowd around, had stood still in his helpless blindness.

Jason saw and heard all, and he shouted to the people to come to his help, for he was one man against twenty. But the people paid no heed to his calling, for every man was thinking of himself. Then Jason fell on the guards with his bare hands only. And his mighty muscles would have made havoc of many of them, but that Jorgen Jorgensen drew his pistol again and fired at him, and wounded him. Jason knew nothing of his injury until his right arm fell to his side, bleeding and useless. After that, he was seized from behind and from before, and held to the ground while Michael Sunlocks and Greeba were hurried away.

Then the air began to be filled with smoke, a wind that was like a solid wall of black sand swept up from the south, and sudden darkness covered everything.

"It is the lava!" shouted one.

"It's the fiery flood!" shouted another.

"It's the end of the world!" shouted a third.

And at one impulse the people rushed hither, thither—north, south, east, west—some weeping, some shrieking, some swearing, some laughing like demons—all wild with frenzy and mad with terror.

Jorgen Jorgensen found his little piebald pony where he had left it, for the docile beast, with the reins over its head, was munching the grass at the foot of the causeway. He mounted, and rode past Jason as the men were loosening their hold of him, and peering into his face he said with a sneer, "If this is the end of the world, as they say, make the best of what is left of it, and fly."

With that, he thrust spurs into his horse's sides, and went off at utmost speed.

Then Jason was alone on the plain. Not another human soul was left. The crowd was gone; the Mount of Laws was silent, and a flock of young sheep ran past it bleating. Over the mountains to the south a red glow burned along the black sky, and lurid flames shot through it.

Such was the beginning of the eruption of Skaptar. And Jason staggered along in the day-darkness, alone, abandoned, shouting like a maniac, swearing like a man accursed, crying out to the desolate waste and the black wind sweeping over it, that if this were the end of the world, he had a question to ask of Him who made it: Why He had broken His word, which said that the wages of sin was death—why the avenger that was promised had not come to smite down the wicked and save the just?

VI.

In this valley of the Loberg there is a long peninsula of rock stretching between the western bank of the lake and the river called the Oxara. It begins in a narrow neck where is a pass for one horse only, and ends in a deep pool over a jagged precipice, with a mighty gorge of water falling from the opposite ravine. It is said that this awful place was used in ancient days for the execution of women who had killed their children, and of men who had robbed the widow and the orphan.

Near the narrowest part of the peninsula a man was plunging along in the [darkness], trusting solely to the sight of his pony, for his own eyes could see nothing. Two long hours he had been groping his way from the Mount of Laws, and he was still within one short mile of it. But at last he saw help at hand in his extremity, for a man on foot approached him out of the gloom. He took him for a farmer of those parts, and hailed him with hearty cheer.

"Good man," he said, "put me on the right path for Reykjavik, and you shall have five kroner, and welcome."

But scarcely had he spoken when he recognized the man he had met, and the man recognized him. The one was Jason, and the other Jorgen Jorgensen.

Jorgen Jorgensen thought his hour had come, for, putting his hand to his weapon, he remembered that he had not reloaded it since he had shot at Jason, and so he flung it away. But the old tiger was not to be subdued. "Come," he said, out of the black depths of his heart, "let us have done. What is it to be?"

Then Jason stepped back, and said, "That is the way to Reykjavik—over the stream and through the first chasm on the left."

At this, Jorgen Jorgensen seemed to catch his breath. He tried to speak and could not.

"No," said Jason. "It may be weakness, it may be folly, it may be madness, but you were my mother's father, God pity her and forgive you, and not even at the price of my brother's life will I have your blood on my hands. Go!"

Jorgen Jorgensen touched his horse and rode on, with his gray, dishonored head deep in his breast. And, evil man as he was, surely his cold heart was smitten with shame.

---

CHAPTER VI.
The Gospel of Love.

No Althing was held in Iceland in that year of the great eruption of Skaptar. The dread visitation lasted six long months, from the end of June to the beginning of January of the year following. During that time the people of the South and Southeast, who had been made homeless and penniless, were constantly trooping into Reykjavik in hundreds and tens of hundreds. The population of the capital rose from less than two thousand to more than twenty thousand. Where so many were housed no man ever knew, and how they lived none can say. Every hut, every hovel, every hole was full of human beings. Men, women, and children crawled like vermin in every quarter. For food, they had what fish came out of the sea, and when the frost covered the fiord a foot deep with ice, they starved on fish bones and and moss and seaweed.

By this time a cry for help had gone up throughout Europe, and Denmark and England had each sent a shipload of provisions, corn and meal and potatoes. The relief came late, the ships were caught in the ice, and held ice-bound a long month off Reykianess, and when at length the food for which the people famished was brought into Reykjavik harbor, the potatoes were like slabs of leather and the corn and meal like blocks of stone.

But even in this land of fire and frost, the Universal Mother is good to her children, and the people lived through their distresses. By the end of February they were trooping back to the scenes of their former homes, for, desolate as those places were, they loved them and clung to them still.

In the days of this awful calamity there were few that remembered Michael Sunlocks. Jorgen Jorgensen might have had his will of him then, and scarce anybody the wiser. That he held his hand was due first to fear and then to contempt; fear of Copenhagen, contempt of the man who had lost his influence over the people of Iceland. He was wrong on both counts. Copenhagen cared nothing for the life of Michael Sunlocks, and laughed at the revolution whereof he had been the head and centre. But when the [people] of Iceland recovered from the deadly visitation, their hearts turned back to the man who had suffered for their sakes.

Then it appeared that through these weary months Michael Sunlocks had been lying in the little house of detention at Reykjavik, with no man save one man, and that was old Adam Fairbrother, to raise a voice on his behalf, and no woman save one woman, and that was Greeba, to cling to him in his extremity. Neither of these had been allowed to come near to him, but both had been with him always. Again and again old Adam had forced his way to the Governor, and protested that Michael Sunlocks was not being treated as a prisoner, but as a condemned criminal and galley-slave; and again and again Greeba had come and gone between her lodgings at the house of the Bishop and her heart's home at the prison, with food and drink for him who lay in darkness and solitude. Little he knew to whom he was thus beholden, for she took pains to keep her secret, but all Reykjavik saw what she was doing. And the heart of Reykjavik was touched when she brought her child from Krisuvik, thinking no shame of her altered state, content to exist in simple poverty where she had once lived in wealth, if so be that she might but touch the walls that contained her husband.

Seeing how the sympathy was going, Jorgen Jorgensen set himself to consider what step to take, and finally concluded to remove Michael Sunlocks as far as possible from the place where his power was still great, and his temptation to use it was powerful. The remotest spot under his rule was Grimsey, an island lying on the Arctic circle, thirty-five miles from the mainland. It was small, it was sparsely populated, its inhabitants were fishermen with no craft but open row boats; it had no trade; no vessels touched at it, and the sea that separated it from Iceland was frozen during many months of the year. And to this island Jorgensen decided that Michael Sunlocks should go.

When the word was brought to Michael Sunlocks, he asked what he was expected to do on that little rock at the end of the world, and said that Grimsey would be his sentence of Jorgen death.

"I prefer to die, for I have no great reason to wish for life," he said; "but if I must live, let me live here. I am blind, I do not know the darkness of this place, and all I ask of you is air and water."

Old Adam, too, protested loudly, whereupon Jorgen Jorgensen answered with a smile that he had supposed that all he intended to do was for the benefit of the prisoner himself, who would surely prefer a whole island to live upon to being confined in a cell at Reykjavik.

"He will there have liberty to move about," said Jorgen, "and he will live under the protection of the Danish laws."

"Then that will be more than he has done here," said Adam, boldly, "where he has existed at the caprice of a Danish tyrant."

The people of Reykjavik heard of the banishment with surprise and anger, but nothing availed to prevent it. When the appointed day came, Michael Sunlocks was marched out of his prison and taken off towards the Bursting-sand desert between a line of guards. There was a great throng to bid adieu to him, and to groan at the power that sent him. His face was pale, but his bodily strength was good. His step was firm and steady, and gave hardly a hint of his blindness. His farewell of those who crowded upon him was simple and manly.

"Good-bye," he said, "and though with my eyes I cannot see you, I can see you with my heart, and that is the better sight whereof death alone can rob me. No doubt you have much to forgive to me; so forgive it to me now, for we shall meet no more."

There was many a sob at that word, but the two who would have been most touched by it were not there to hear it, for Greeba and old Adam were busy with their own enterprise, as we shall learn hereafter.

When Michael Sunlocks was landed at Grimsey, he was offered first as bondman for life, or prisoner-slave to the largest bonder there, a grasping old miser named Jonsson, who, like Jorgen himself, had never allowed his bad conscience to get the better of him. But Jonsson looked at Sunlocks with a curl of the lip and said, "What's the use of a blind man?" So the end of all was that [Sunlocks] was put in charge of the priest of the island. The priest was to take him into his house, to feed, clothe and attend to him, and report his condition twice a year to the Governor at Reykjavik. For such service to the State, the good man was to receive an annual stipend of one hundred kroner. And all arrangements being made, the escort that had brought Michael Sunlocks the ten days' journey over the desert, set their faces back towards the capital.

Michael Sunlocks was then on the edge of the habitable world. There was no attempt to confine him, for his home was an island bound by a rocky coast; he was blind and, therefore, helpless; and he could not step out a thousand yards alone without the danger of walking over a precipice into the sea. So that with all his brave show of liberty, he was as much in fetters as if his feet had been enchained to the earth beneath them.

The priest, who was in truth his jailer, was one who has already been heard of in this history, being no other than the Sigfus Thomsson (titled Sir from his cure of souls) who was banished from his chaplaincy at Reykjavik six and twenty years before for marrying Stephen Orry to Rachael, the daughter of the Governor-General Jorgensen. He had been young then, and since his life had been cut in twain he had fallen into some excesses. Thus it had often happened that when his people came to church over miles of their trackless country he had been too drunk to go through with it, and sometimes when they wished to make sure of him for a wedding or a christening, they had been compelled to decoy him into his house over night and lock him up until morning. Now he was elderly and lived alone, save for a fractious old man-servant, in a straggling old moss-covered house, or group of houses. He was weak of will, timid as a deer, and infirm of purpose, yet he was beloved by all men and pitied by all women for his sweet simplicity, whereof anyone might take advantage, and for the tenderness that could never resist a story of distress.

The coming of Michael Sunlocks startled him out of his tipsy sleep of a quarter of a century, and his whole household was put into a wild turmoil. In the midst of it, when he was at his wit's end to know what to do for his prisoner-guest, a woman, a stranger to Grimsey, carrying a child in her arms, presented herself at his door. She was young and comely, poorly but not meanly clad, and she offered herself to the priest as his servant. Her story was simple, touching, and plausible. She had lately lost her husband, an Icelander, though she herself was a foreigner, as her speech might tell. And hearing at Husavik that the priest of Grimsey was a lone old gentleman without kith or kin or belongings, she had bethought herself to come and say that she would be glad to take service from him for the sake of the home he might offer her.

It was Greeba, and simple old Sir Sigfus fell an easy prey to her woman's wit. He wiped his rheumy eyes while she told her story, and straightway sent her into the kitchen. Only one condition he made with her, and that was that she was to bear herself in his house as Iceland women bear themselves in the houses of Iceland masters. No more than that and no less. She was to keep to her own apartments and never allow herself to be seen or heard by a guest that was henceforth to live with him. That good man was blind, and would trouble her but little, for he had seen sorrow, poor soul, and was very silent.

Greeba consented to this with all earnestness, for it fell straight in the way of her own designs. But with a true woman's innocent duplicity she showed modesty and said "He shall never know that I'm in your house, sir, unless you tell him so yourself."

Thus did Greeba place herself under the same roof with Michael Sunlocks, and baffle discovery by the cunning of love. Two purposes were to be served by her artifice. First she was to be constantly by the side of her husband, to nurse him and tend him, to succor him, and to watch over him. Next, she was to be near him for her own sake, and for love's sake, to win him back to her some day by means more dear than those that had won him for her at the first. She had decided not to reveal herself to him in the meantime, for he had lost faith in her affection. He had charged her with marrying him for pride's sake, but he should see that she had married him for himself alone. The heart of his love was dead, but day by day, unknown, unseen, unheard, she would breathe upon it, until the fire in its ashes lived again. Such was the design with which Greeba took the place of a menial in the house where her husband lived as a prisoner, and little did she count the cost of it.

Six months passed, and she kept her promise to the priest to live as an Iceland servant in the house of an Iceland master. She was never seen, and never heard, and what personal service was called for was done by the snappish old man-servant. But she filled the old house, once so muggy and dark, with all the cheer and comfort of life. She knew that Michael Sunlocks felt the change, for one day she heard him say to the priest, as he lifted his blind face and seemed to look around, "One would think that this place must be full of sunshine."

"Why, and so it is," said the priest, "and that's my good housekeeper's doing."

"I have heard her step," said Michael Sunlocks. "Who is she?"

"A poor young woman that has lately lost her husband," said the priest.

"Young, you say?" said Sunlocks.

"Why, yes, young as I go," said the priest.

"Poor soul!" said Sunlocks.

It cost Greeba many a pang not to fling herself at her husband's feet at hearing that word so sadly spoken. But she remembered her promise and was silent. Not long afterwards she heard Michael Sunlocks ask the priest if he had never thought of marriage. And the priest answered yes, that he was to have married at Reykjavik about the time he was sent to Grimsey, but the lady had looked shy at his banishment and declined to share it.

"So I have never looked at a woman again," said the priest.

"And I daresay you have your tender thoughts of her, though so badly treated," said Sunlocks.

"Well, yes," said the priest, "yes."

"You were chaplain at Reykjavik, but looking to be priest or dean, and perhaps bishop some day?" said Sunlocks.

"Well, maybe so; such dreams come in one's youth," said the priest.

"And when you were sent to Grimsey there was nothing before you but a cure of less than a hundred souls?" said Sunlocks.

"That is so," said the priest.

"The old story," said Sunlocks, and he drew a deep breath.

But deeper far was the breath that Greeba drew, for it seemed to be the last gasp of her heart.

A year passed, and never once had Greeba spoken that her husband might hear her. But if she did not speak, she listened always, and the silence of her tongue seemed to make her ears the more keen. Thus she found a way to meet all his wishes, and before he had asked he was answered. If the day was cold he found gloves to his hand; if he thought to wash there was water beside him; if he wished to write the pen lay near his fingers. Meantime he never heard more than a light footfall and the rustle of a dress about him, but as these sounds awoke painful memories he listened and said nothing.

The summer had come and gone in which he could walk out by the priest's arm, or lie by the hour within sound of a stream, and the winter had fallen in with its short days and long nights. And once, when the snow lay thick on the ground, Greeba heard him say how cheerfully he might cheat time of many a weary hour of days like that if only he had a fiddle to beguile them. At that she remembered that it was not want of money that had placed her where she was, and before the spring of that year a little church organ came from Reykjavik, addressed to the priest, as a present from someone whose name was unknown to him.

"Some guardian angel seems to hover around us," said Michael Sunlocks, "to give us everything that we can wish for."

The joy in his blind face brought smiles into the face of Greeba, but her heart was heavy for all that. To live within hourly sight of love, yet never to share it, was to sit at a feast and eat nothing. To hear his voice, yet never to answer it, to see his face, yet never to touch it with the lips that hungered to kiss it, was an ordeal more terrible than any woman's heart could bear. Should she not speak? Might she not reveal herself? Not yet, not yet! But how long, oh, how long?

In the heat of her impatience she could not quite restrain herself, and though she dare not speak, she sang. It was on the Sunday after the organ came, when all the people at Grimsey were at church, in their strong odor of fish and sea fowl, to hear the strange new music. Michael Sunlocks played it, and when the people sang Greeba also joined them. Her voice was low at first, but she soon lost herself and then it rose above the other voices. Suddenly the organ stopped, and she was startled to see the blind face of her husband turning in her direction.

Later the same day she heard Sunlocks say to the priest, "Who was the lady who sang?"

"Why, that was my good housekeeper," said the priest.

"And did you say that she had lost her husband?" said Sunlocks.

"Yes, poor thing, and she is a foreigner, too," said the priest.

"Did you say a foreigner?" said Sunlocks.

"Yes, and she has a child left with her also," said the priest.

"A child?" said Sunlocks. And then after a pause he added, with more indifference, "Poor girl! poor girl!"

Hearing this, Greeba fluttered on the verge of discovering herself. "If only I could be sure," she thought, but she could not; and the more closely for the chance that had so nearly revealed her, she hid herself henceforward in the solitude of an Iceland servant.

Two years passed and then Greeba had to share her secret with another. That other was her own child. The little man was nearly three years old by this time, walking a little and talking a great deal, and not to be withheld by any care from going over every corner of the house. He found Michael Sunlocks sitting alone in his darkness, and the two struck up a fast friendship. They talked in baby fashion, and played on the floor for hours. With a wild thrill of the heart, Greeba saw those twain together, and it cost her all she had of patience and self-command not to break in upon them with a shower of rapturous kisses. But she held back her heart like a dog on the leash and listened, while her eyes rained tears and her lips smiled, to the words that passed between them.

"And what's your name, my sweet one?" said Sunlocks in English.

"Michael," lisped the little man.

"So? And an Englishman, too. That's brave."

"Ot's the name of your 'ickle boy?"

"Ah, I've got none, sweetheart."

"Oh."

"But if I had one perhaps his name would be Michael also."

"Oh."

The little eyes looked up into the blind face, and the little lip began to fall. Then, by a sudden impulse, the little legs clambered up to the knee of Sunlocks, and the little head nestled close against his breast.

"I'll be your 'ickle boy."

"So you shall, my sweet one, and you shall come again and sit with me, and sing to me, for I am very lonely sometimes, and your dear voice will cheer me."

But the little man had forgotten his trouble by this time, and scrambled back to the floor. There he sat on his haunches like a frog, and cried, "Look! look! look!" as he held up a white pebble in his dumpy hand.

"I cannot look, little one, for I am blind."

"Ot's blind?"

"Having eyes that cannot see, sweetheart."

"Oh."

"But your eyes can see, and if you are to be my little boy, my little Michael, your eyes shall see for my eyes also, and you shall come to me every day, and tell me when the sun is shining, and the sky is blue, and then we will go out together and listen for the birds that will be singing."

"Dat's nice," said the little fellow, looking down at the pebble in his palm, and just then the priest came into the house out of the snow.

"How comes it that this sweet little man and I have never met before?" said Sunlocks.

"You might live ten years in an Iceland house and never see the children of its servants," said the priest.

"I've heard his silvery voice, though," said Sunlocks. "What is the color of his eyes?"

"Blue," said the priest.

"Then his hair—this long curly hair—it must be of the color of the sun?" said Sunlocks.

"Flaxen," said the priest.

"Run along to your mother, sweetheart, run," said Sunlocks, and, dropping back in his seat, he murmured, "How easily he might have been my son indeed."

Kneeling on both knees, her hot face turned down and her parted lips quivering, Greeba had listened to all this with the old delicious trembling at both sides her heart. And going back to her own room, she caught sight of herself in the glass, and saw that her eyes were dancing like diamonds and all her cheeks a rosy red. Life, and a gleam of sunshine, seemed to have shot into her face in an instant, and while she looked there came over her a creeping thrill of delight, for she knew that she was beautiful. And because he loved beauty whose love was everything to her, she cried for joy, and picked up her boy, where he stood tugging at her gown, and kissed him rapturously.

The little man, with proper manly indifference to such endearments, wriggled back to the ground, and then Greeba remembered, with a flash that fell on her brain like a sword, that her husband was blind now, and all the beauty of the world was nothing to him. Smitten by this thought, she stood a moment, while the sunshine died out of her eyes and the rosy red out of her cheeks. But presently it came to her to ask herself if Sunlocks was blind forever, and if nothing could be done for him. This brought back, with pangs of remorse for such long forgetfulness, the memory of some man, an apothecary in Husavik, who had the credit of curing many of blindness after accidents in the northern mines where free men worked for wage. So, thinking of this apothecary throughout that day and the next, she found at last a crooked way to send money to him, out of the store that still remained to her, and to ask him to come to Grimsey.

But, waiting for the coming of the apothecary, a new dread, that was also a new hope, stole over her.

Since that first day on which her boy and her husband talked together, and every day thereafter when Sunlocks had called out "Little Michael! little Michael!" and she had sent the child in, with his little flaxen curls combed out, his little chubby face rubbed to a shiny red, and all his little body smelling sweet with the soft odors of childhood, she had noticed—she could not help it—that Sunlocks listened for the sound of her own footstep whenever by chance (which might have been rare) she passed his way.

And at first this was a cause of fear to her, lest he should discover her before her time came to reveal herself; and then of hope that he might even do so, and save her against her will from the sickening pains of hungry waiting; and finally of horror, that perhaps after all he was thinking of her as another woman. This last thought sent all the blood of her body tingling into her face, and on the day it flashed upon her, do what she would she could not but hate him for it as for an infidelity that might not be forgiven.

"He never speaks of me," she thought, "never thinks of me; I am dead to him; quite, quite dead and swept out of his mind."

It was a cruel conflict of love and hate, and if it had come to a man he would have said within himself, "By this token I know that she whom I love has forgotten me, and may be happy with another some day. Well, I am nothing—let me go my ways." But that is not the gospel of a woman's love, with all its sweet, delicious selfishness. So after Greeba had told herself once or twice that her husband had forgotten her, she told herself a score of times that do what he would he should yet be hers, hers only, and no other woman's in all the wide world. Then she thought, "How foolish! Who is there to take him from me? Why, no one."

About the same time she heard Sunlocks question the priest concerning her, asking what the mother of little Michael was like to look upon. And the priest answered that if the eyes of an old curmudgeon like himself could see straight, she was comely beyond her grade in life, and young, too, though her brown hair had sometimes a shade of gray, and gentle and silent, and of a soft and touching voice.

"I've heard her voice once," said Sunlocks. "And her husband was an Icelander, and he is dead, you say?"

"Yes," said the priest; "and she's like myself in one thing."

"And what is that?" said Sunlocks.

"That she has never been able to look at anybody else," said the priest. "And that's why she is here, you must know, burying herself alive on old Grimsey."

"Oh," said Sunlocks, in the low murmur of the blind, "if God had but given me this woman, so sweet, so true, so simple, instead of her—of her—and yet—and yet——"

"Gracious heavens!" thought Greeba, "he is falling in love with me."

At that, the hot flush overspread her cheeks again, and her dark eyes danced, and all her loveliness flowed back upon her in an instant. And then a subtle fancy, a daring scheme, a wild adventure broke on her heart and head, and made every nerve in her body quiver. She would let him go on; he should think she was the other woman; she would draw him on to love her, and one day when she held him fast and sure, and he was hers, hers, hers only forever and ever, she would open her arms and cry, "Sunlocks, Sunlocks, I am Greeba, Greeba!"

It was while she was in the first hot flush of this wild thought, never doubting but the frantic thing was possible, for love knows no impediments, that the apothecary came from Husavik, saying he was sent by some unknown correspondent named Adam Fairbrother, who had written from London. He examined the eyes of Michael Sunlocks by the daylight first, but the season being the winter season, and the daylight heavy with fog from off the sea, he asked for a candle, and Greeba was called to hold it while he examined the eyes again. Never before had she been so near to her husband throughout the two years that she had lived under the same roof with him, and now that she stood face to face with him, within sound of his very breathing, with nothing between them but the thin gray film that lay over his dear eyes, she could not persuade herself but that he was looking at her and seeing her. Then she began to tremble, and presently a voice said,

"Steadily, young woman, steadily, or your candle may fall on the good master's face."

She tried to compose herself, but could not, and when she had recovered from her first foolish dread, there came a fear that was not foolish—a fear of the verdict of the apothecary. Waiting for this in those minutes that seemed to be hours, she knew that she was on the verge of betraying herself, and however she held her breath she could see that her bosom was heaving.

"Yes," said the apothecary, calmly, "yes, I see no reason why you should not recover your sight."

"Thank God!" said Michael Sunlocks.

"Thank God again," said the priest.

And Greeba, who had dropped the candle to the floor at length, had to run from the room on the instant, lest the cry of her heart should straightway be the cry of her lips as well, "Thank God, again and again, forever and forever."

And, being back in her own apartment, she plucked up her child into her arms, and cried over him, and laughed over him, and whispered strange words of delight into his ear, mad words of love, wild words of hope.

"Yes, yes," she whispered, "he will recover his sight, and see his little son, and know him for his own, his own, his own. Oh, yes, yes, yes, he will know him, he will know him, for he will see his own face, his own dear face, in little Michael's."

But next day, when the apothecary had gone, leaving lotions and drops for use throughout a month, and promising to return at the end of it, Greeba's new joy made way for a new terror, as she reflected that just as Sunlocks would see little Michael if he recovered his sight, so he would see herself. At that thought all her heart was in her mouth again, for she told herself that if Sunlocks saw her he would also see what deception she had practiced in that house, and would hate her for it, and tell her, as he had told her once before, that it came of the leaven of her old lightness that had led her on from false-dealing to false-dealing, and so he would turn his back upon her or drive her from him.

Then in the cruel war of her feelings she hardly knew whether to hope that Sunlocks should recover his sight, or remain as he was. Her pity cried out for the one, and her love for the other. If he recovered, at least there would be light for him in his dungeon, though she might not be near to share it. But if he remained as he was, she would be beside him always, his second sight, his silent guardian spirit, eating her heart out with hungry love, but content and thanking God.

"Why couldn't I leave things as they were?" she asked herself, but she was startled out of the selfishness of her love by a great crisis that came soon afterwards.

Now Michael Sunlocks had been allowed but little intercourse with the world during the two and a half years of his imprisonment since the day of his recapture at the Mount of Laws. While in the prison at Reykjavik he had heard the pitiful story of that day; who his old yoke-fellow had been, what he had done and said, and how at last, when his brave scheme had tottered to ruin, he had gone out of the ken and knowledge of all men. Since Sunlocks came to Grimsey he had written once to Adam Fairbrother, asking tenderly after the old man's own condition, earnestly after Greeba's material welfare, and with deep affectionate solicitude for the last tidings of Jason. His letter never reached its destination, for the Governor of Iceland was the postmaster as well. And Adam on his part had written twice to Michael Sunlocks, once from Copenhagen where (when Greeba had left for Grimsey) he had gone by help of her money from Reykjavik, thinking to see the King of Denmark in his own person; and once from London, whereto he had followed on when that bold design had failed him. But Adam's letters shared the fate of the letter of Sunlocks, and thus through two long years no news of the world without had broken the silence of that lonely home on the rock of the Arctic seas.

But during that time there had been three unwritten communications from Jorgen Jorgensen. The first came after some six months in the shape of a Danish sloop of war, which took up its moorings in the roadstead outside; the second after a year, in the shape of a flagstaff and flag which were to be used twice a day for signalling to the ship that the prisoner was still in safe custody; the third after two years, in the shape of a huge lock and key, to be placed on some room in which the prisoner was henceforward to be confined. These three communications, marking in their contrary way the progress of old Adam's persistent suit, first in Denmark and then in England, were followed after a while by a fourth. This was a message from the Governor at Reykjavik to the old priest at Grimsey, that, as he valued his livelihood and life he was to keep close guard and watch over his prisoner, and, if need be, to warn him that a worse fate might come to him at any time.

Now, the evil hour when this final message came was just upon the good time when the apothecary from Husavik brought the joyful tidings that Sunlocks might recover his sight, and the blow was the heavier for the hope that had gone before it. All Grimsey shared both, for the fisherfolk had grown to like the pale stranger who, though so simple in speech and manner, had been a great man in some way that they scarcely knew—having no one to tell them, being so far out of the world—but had fallen upon humiliation and deep dishonor. Michael Sunlocks himself took the blow with composure, saying it was plainly his destiny and of a piece with the rest of his fate, wherein no good thing had ever come to him without an evil one coming on the back of it. The tender heart of the old priest was thrown into wild commotion, for Sunlocks had become, during the two years of their life together, as a son to him, a son that was as a father also, a stay and guardian, before whom his weakness—that of intemperance—stood rebuked.

But the trouble of old Sir Sigfus was as nothing to that of Greeba. In the message of the Governor she saw death, instant death, death without word or warning, and every hour of her life thereafter was beset with terrors. It was the month of February; and if the snow fell from the mossy eaves in heavy thuds, she thought it was the muffled tread of the guards who were to come for her husband; and if the ice-floes that swept down from Greenland cracked on the coast of Grimsey, she heard the shot that was to end his life. When Sunlocks talked of destiny she cried, and when the priest railed at Jorgen Jorgensen (having his own reason to hate him) she cursed the name of the tyrant. But all the while she had to cry without tears and curse only in the dark silence of her heart, though she was near to betraying herself a hundred times a day.

"Oh, it is cruel," she thought, "very, very cruel. Is this what I have waited for all this weary, weary time?"

And though so lately her love had fought with her pity to prove that it was best for both of them that Sunlocks should remain blind, she found it another disaster now, in the dear inconsistency of womanhood, that he should die on the eve of regaining his sight.

"He will never see his boy," she thought, "never, never, never now."

Yet she could hardly believe it true that the cruel chance could befall. What good would the death of Sunlocks do to anyone? What evil did it bring to any creature that he was alive on that rock at the farthest ends of the earth and sea? Blind, too, and helpless, degraded from his high place, his young life wrecked, and his noble gifts wasted! There must have been some mistake. She would go out to the ship and ask if it was not so.

And with such wild thoughts she hurried off to the little village at the edge of the bay. There she stood a long hour by the fisherman's jetty, looking wistfully out to where the sloop of war lay, like a big wooden tub, between gloomy sea and gloomy sky, and her spirit failed her, and though she had borrowed a boat she could go no further.

"They might laugh at me, and make a jest of me," she thought, "for I cannot tell them that I am his wife."

With that, she went her way back as she came, crying on the good powers above to tell her what to do next, and where to look for help. And entering in at the porch of her own apartments, which stood aside from the body of the house, she heard voices within, and stopped to listen. At first she thought they were the voices of her child and her husband; but though one of them was that of little Michael, the other was too deep, too strong, too sad for the voice of Sunlocks.

"And so your name is Michael, my brave boy. Michael! Michael!" said the voice, and it was strange and yet familiar. "And how like you are to your mother, too! How like! How very like!" And the voice seemed to break in the speaker's throat.

Greeba grew dizzy, and stumbled forward. And, as she entered the house, a man rose from the settle, put little Michael to the ground, and faced about to her. The man was Jason.

---

CHAPTER VII.
The Gospel of Renunciation.

I.

What had happened in the great world during the two years in which Michael Sunlocks had been out of it is very simple and easily told. Old Adam Fairbrother had failed at London as he had failed at Copenhagen, and all the good that had come of his efforts had ended in evil. It was then that accident helped him in his despair.

The relations of England and Denmark had long been doubtful, for France seemed to be stepping between them. Napoleon was getting together a combination of powers against England, and in order to coerce Denmark into using her navy—a small but efficient one—on the side of the alliance, he threatened to send a force overland. He counted without the resources of Nelson, who, with no more ado than setting sail, got across to Copenhagen, took possession of every ship of war that lay in Danish waters, and brought them home to England in a troop.

When Adam heard of this he saw his opportunity in a moment, and hurrying away to Nelson at Spithead he asked if among the Danish ships that had been captured there was a sloop of war that had lain near two years off the island of Grimsey. Nelson answered, No, but that if there was such a vessel still at liberty he was not of a mind to leave it to harass him. So Adam told why the sloop was there, and Nelson, waiting for no further instructions, despatched an English man-of-war, with Adam aboard of her, to do for the last of the Danish fleet what had been done for the body of it, and at the same time to recover the English prisoner whom she had been sent to watch.

Before anything was known of this final step of Nelson, his former proceeding had made a great noise throughout Europe, where it was loudly condemned as against the law of nations, by the rascals who found themselves outwitted. When the report reached Reykjavik, Jorgen Jorgensen saw nothing that could come of it but instant war between Denmark and England, and nothing that could come of war with England but disaster to Denmark, for he knew the English navy of old. So to make doubly sure of his own position in a tumult wherein little things would of a certainty be seized up with great ones, he conceived the idea of putting Michael Sunlocks out of the way, and thus settling one harassing complication. Then losing no time he made ready a despatch to the officer in command of the sloop of war off Grimsey, ordering him to send a company of men ashore immediately to execute the prisoner lying in charge of the priest of the island.

Now this despatch, whereof the contents became known throughout Reykjavik in less time than Jorgen took to write and seal it, had to be carried to Grimsey by two of his bodyguard. But the men were Danes, and as they did not know the way across the Bursting-sand desert, an Iceland guide had to be found for them. To this end the two taverns of the town were beaten up for a man, who at that season—it was winter, and the snow lay thick over the lava streams and the sand—would adventure so far from home.

And now it was just at this time, after two-and-a-half years in which no man had seen him or heard of him, that Jason returned to Reykjavik. Scarce anyone knew him. He was the wreck of himself, a worn, torn, pitiful, broken ruin of a man. People lifted both hands at sight of him, but he showed no self-pity. Day after day, night after night, he frequented the taverns. He drank as he had never before been known to drink; he laughed as he had never been heard to laugh; he sang as he had never been heard to sing, and to all outward appearance he was nothing now but a shameless, graceless, disorderly, abandoned profligate.

Jorgen Jorgensen heard that Jason had returned, and ordered his people to fetch him to Government House. They did so, and Jorgen and Jason stood face to face. Jorgen looked at Jason as one who would say, "Dare you forget the two men whose lives you have taken?" And Jason looked back at Jorgen as one who would answer, "Dare you remember that I spared your own life?" Then, without a word to Jason, old Jorgen turned to his people and said, "Take him away." So Jason went back to his dissipations, and thereafter no man said yea or nay to him.

But when he heard of the despatch, he was sobered by it in a moment, and when the guards came on their search for a guide to the tavern where he was, he leapt to his feet and said, "I'll go."

"You won't pass, my lad," said one of the Danes, "for you would be dead drunk before you crossed the Basket Slope Hill."

"Would I?" said Jason, moodily, "who knows?" And with that he shambled out. But in his heart he cried, "The hour has come at last! Thank God! Thank God!"

Before he was missed he had gone from Reykjavik, and made his way to the desert with his face towards Grimsey.

The next day the guards found their guide and set out on their journey.

The day after that a Danish captain arrived at Reykjavik from Copenhagen, and reported to Jorgen Jorgensen that off the Westmann Islands he had sighted a British man-of-war, making for the northern shores of Iceland. This news put Jorgen into extreme agitation, for he guessed at its meaning in an instant. As surely as the war ship was afloat she was bound for Grimsey, to capture the sloop that lay there, and as surely as England knew of the sloop, she also knew of the prisoner whom it was sent to watch. British sea-captains, from Drake downwards, had been a race of pirates and cut-throats, and if the captain of this ship, on landing at Grimsey, found Michael Sunlocks dead, he would follow on to Reykjavik and never take rest until he had strung up the Governor and his people to the nearest yardarm.

So thinking in the wild turmoil of his hot old head, wherein everything he had thought before was turned topsy-turvy, Jorgen Jorgensen decided to countermand his order for the execution of Sunlocks. But his despatch was then a day gone on its way. Iceland guides were a tribe of lazy vagabonds, not a man or boy about his person was to be trusted, and so Jorgen concluded that nothing would serve but that he should set out after the guards himself. Perhaps he would find them at Thingvellir, perhaps he would cross them on the desert, but at least he would overtake them before they took boat at Husavik. Twelve hours a day he would ride, old as he was, if only these skulking Iceland giants could be made to ride after him.

Thus were four several companies at the same time on their way to Grimsey: the English man-of-war from Spithead to take possession of the Danish sloop; the guards of the Governor to order the execution of Michael Sunlocks; Jorgen Jorgensen to countermand the order; and Red Jason on his own errand known to no man.

The first to reach was Jason.

II.

When Jason set little Michael from his knee to the floor, and rose to his feet as Greeba entered, he was dirty, bedraggled, and unkempt; his face was jaded and old-looking, his skin shoes were splashed with snow, and torn, and his feet were bleeding; his neck was bare, and his sheepskin coat was hanging to his back only by the woollen scarf that was tied about his waist. Partly from shock at this change, and partly from a confused memory of other scenes—the marriage festival at Government House, the night trial in the little chamber of the Senate, the jail, the mines, and the Mount of Laws—Greeba staggered at sight of Jason and would have cried aloud and fallen. But he caught her in his arms in a moment, and whispered her in a low voice at her ear to be silent, for that he had something to say that must be heard by no one beside herself.

She recovered herself instantly, drew back as if his touch had stung her, and asked with a look of dread if he had known she was there.

"Yes," he answered.

"Where have you come from?"

"Reykjavik."

She glanced down at his bleeding feet, and said, "on foot?"

"On foot," he answered.

"When did you leave?"

"Five days ago."

"Then you have walked night and day across the desert?"

"Night and day."

"Alone?"

"Yes, alone."

She had become more eager at every question, and now she cried, "What has happened? What is going to happen? Do not keep it from me. I can bear it, for I have borne many things. Tell me why have you come?"

"To save your husband," said Jason. "Hush! Listen!"

And then he told her, with many gentle protests against her ghastly looks of fear, of the guards that were coming with the order for the execution of Michael Sunlocks. Hearing that, she waited for no more, but fell to a great outburst of weeping. And until her bout was spent he stood silent and helpless beside her, with a strong man's pains at sight of a woman's tears.

"How she loves him!" he thought, and again and again the word rang in the empty place of his heart.

But when she had recovered herself he smiled as well as he was able for the great drops that still rolled down his own haggard face, and protested once more that there was nothing to fear, for he himself had come to forestall the danger, and things were not yet so far past help but there was still a way to compass it.

"What way?" she asked.

"The way of escape," he answered.

"Impossible," she said. "There is a war ship outside, and every path to the shore is watched."

He laughed at that, and said that if every goat track were guarded, yet would he make his way to the sea. And as for the war ship outside, there was a boat within the harbor, the same that he had come by, a Shetland smack that had made pretence to put in for haddock, and would sail at any moment that he gave it warning.

She listened eagerly, and, though she saw but little likelihood of escape, she clutched at the chance of it.

"When will you make the attempt?" she asked.

"Two hours before dawn to-morrow," he answered.

"Why so late?"

"Because the nights are moonlight."

"I'll be ready," she whispered.

"Make the child ready, also," he said.

"Indeed, yes," she whispered.

"Say nothing to anyone, and if anyone questions you, answer as little as you may. Whatever you hear, whatever you see, whatever I may do or pretend to do, speak not a word, give not a sign, change not a feature. Do you promise?"

"Yes," she whispered, "yes, yes."

And then suddenly a new thought smote her.

"But, Jason," she said, with her eyes aside, and her fingers running through the hair of little Michael, "but, Jason," she faltered, "you will not betray me?"

"Betray you?" he said, and laughed a little.

"Because," she added quietly, "though I am here, my husband does not know me for his wife. He is blind, and cannot see me, and for my own reasons I have never spoken to him since I came."

"You have never spoken to him?" said Jason.

"Never."

"And how long have you lived in this house?"

"Two years."

Then Jason remembered what Sunlocks had told him at the mines, and in another moment he had read Greeba's secret by the light of his own.

"I understand," he said, sadly, "I think I understand."

She caught the look of sorrow in his eyes, and said, "But, Jason, what of yourself?"

At that he laughed again, and tried to carry himself off with a brave gayety.

"Where have you been?" she asked.

"At [Akureyri], Husavik, Reykjavik, the desert—everywhere, nowhere," he answered.

"What have you been doing?"

"Drinking, gaming, going to the devil—everything, nothing."

And at that he laughed once more, loudly and noisily, forgetting his own warning.

"Jason," said Greeba, "I wronged you once, and you have done nothing since but heap coals of fire on my head."

"No, no; you never wronged me," he said. "I was a fool—that was all. I made myself think that I cared for you. But it's all over now."

"Jason," she said again, "it was not [altogether] my fault. My husband was everything to me; but another woman might have loved you and made you happy."

"Ay, ay," he said, "another woman, another woman."

"Somewhere or other she waits for you," said Greeba. "Depend on that."

"Ay, somewhere or other," he said.

"So don't lose heart, Jason," she said; "don't lose heart."

"I don't," he said, "not I;" and yet again he laughed. But, growing serious in a moment, he said, "And did you leave home and kindred and come out to this desolate place only that you might live under the same roof with your husband?"

"My home was his home," said Greeba, "my kindred his kindred, and where he was there had I to be."

"And have you waited through these two long years," he said, "for the day and the hour when you might reveal yourself to him?"

"I could have waited for my husband," said Greeba, "through twice the seven long years that Jacob waited for Rachel."

He paused a moment, and then said, "No, no, I don't lose heart. Somewhere or other, somewhere or other—that's the way of it." Then he laughed louder than ever, and every hollow note of his voice went through Greeba like a knife. But in the empty chamber of his heart he was crying in his despair, "My God! how she loves him! How she loves him!"

III.

Half-an-hour later, when the winter's day was done, and the candles had been lighted, Greeba went in to the priest, where he sat in his room alone, to say that a stranger was asking to see him.

"Bring the stranger in," said the priest, putting down his spectacles on his open book, and then Jason entered.

"Sir Sigfus," said Jason, "your good name has been known to me ever since the days when my poor mother mentioned it with gratitude and tears."

"Your mother?" said the priest; "who was she?"

"Rachel Jorgen's daughter, wife of Stephen Orry."

"Then you must be Jason."

"Yes, your reverence."

"My lad, my good lad," cried the priest, and with a look of joy he rose and laid hold of both Jason's hands. "I have heard of you. I hear of you every day, for your brother is with me. Come, let us go to him. Let us go to him. Come!"

"Wait," said Jason. "First let me deliver you a message concerning him."

The old priest's radiant face fell instantly to a deep sadness. "A message?" he said. "You have never come from Jorgen Jorgensen?"

"No."

"From whom, then?"

"My brother's wife," said Jason.

"His wife?"

"Has he never spoken of her?"

"Yes, but as one who had injured him, and bitterly and cruelly wronged and betrayed him."

"That may be so, your reverence," said Jason, "but who can be hard on the penitent and the dying?"

"Is she dying?" said the priest.

Jason dropped his head. "She sends for his forgiveness," he said. "She cannot die without it."

"Poor soul, poor soul!" said the priest.

"Whatever her faults, he cannot deny her that little mercy," said Jason.

"God forbid it!" said the priest.

"She is alone in her misery, with none to help and none to pity her," said Jason.

"Where is she?" said the priest.

"At Husavik," said Jason.

"But what is her message to me?"

"That you should allow her husband to come to her."

The old priest lifted his hands in helpless bewilderment, but Jason gave him no time to speak.

"Only for a day," said Jason, quickly, "only for one day, an hour, one little hour. Wait, your reverence, do not say no. Think, only think! The poor woman is alone. Let her sins be what they may, she is penitent. She is calling for her husband. She is calling on you to send him. It is her last request—her last prayer. Grant it, and heaven will bless you."

The poor old priest was cruelly distressed.

"My good lad," he cried, "it is impossible. There is a ship outside to watch us. Twice a day I have to signal with the flag that the prisoner is safe, and twice a day the bell of the vessel answers me. It is impossible, I say, impossible, impossible! It cannot be done. There is no way."

"Leave it to me, and I will find a way," said Jason.

But the old priest only wrung his hands, and cried, "I dare not; I must not; it is more than my place is worth."

"He will come back," said Jason.

"Only last week," said the priest, "I had a message from Reykjavik which foreshadowed his death. He knows it, we all know it."

"But he will come back," said Jason, again.

"My good lad, how can you say so? Where have you lived to think it possible? Once free of the place where the shadow of death hangs over him, what man alive would return to it."

"He will come back," said Jason, firmly; "I know he will, I swear he will."

"No, no," said the old man. "I'm only a simple old priest, buried alive these thirty years, or nearly, on this lonely island of the frozen seas, but I know better than that. It isn't in human nature, my good lad, and no man that breathes can do it. Then think of me, think of me!"

"I do think of you," said Jason, "and to show you how sure I am that he will come back, I will make you an offer."

"What is it?" said the priest.

"To stand as your bondman while he is away," said Jason.

"What! Do you know what you are saying?" cried the priest.

"Yes," said Jason, "for I came to say it."

"Do you know," said the priest, "that any day, at any hour, the sailors from yonder ship may come to execute my poor prisoner?"

"I do. But what of that?" said Jason. "Have they ever been here before?"

"Never," said the priest.

"Do they know your prisoner from another man?"

"No."

"Then where is your risk?" said Jason.

"My risk? Mine?" cried the priest, with the great drops bursting from his eyes, "I was thinking of yours. My lad, my good lad, you have made me ashamed. If you dare risk your life, I dare risk my place, and I'll do it; I'll do it."

"God bless you!" said Jason.

"And now let us go to him," said the priest. "He is in yonder room, poor soul. When the order came from Reykjavik that I was to keep close guard and watch on him, nothing would satisfy him but that I should turn the key on him. That was out of fear for me. He is as brave as a lion, and as gentle as a lamb. Come, the sooner he hears his wife's message the better for all of us. It will be a sad blow to him, badly as she treated him. But come!"

So saying, the old priest was fumbling his deep pockets for a key, and shuffling along, candle in hand, towards a door at the end of a low passage, when Jason laid hold of his arm and said in a whisper, "Wait! It isn't fair that I should let you go farther in this matter. You should be ignorant of what we are doing until it is done."

"As you will," said the priest.

"Can you trust me?" said Jason.

"That I can."

"Then give me the key."

The old man gave it.

"When do you make your next signal?"

"At daybreak to-morrow."

"And when does the bell on the ship answer it?"

"Immediately."

"Go to your room, your reverence," said Jason, "and never stir out of it until you hear the ship's bell in the morning. Then come here, and you will find me waiting on this spot to return this key to you. But first answer me again, Do you trust me?"

"I do," said the old priest.

"You believe I will keep to my bargain, come what may?"

"I believe you will keep to it."

"And so I will, as sure as God's above me."

IV.

Jason opened the door and entered the room. It was quite dark, save for a dull red fire of dry moss that burned on the hearth in one corner. By this little fire Michael Sunlocks sat, with only his sad face visible in the gloom. His long thin hands were clasped about one knee which was half-raised; his noble head was held down, and his flaxen hair fell across his cheeks to his shoulders.

He had heard the key turn in the lock, and said quietly, "Is that you, Sir Sigfus?"

"No," said Jason.

"Who is it?" said Sunlocks.

"A friend," said Jason.

Sunlocks twisted about as though his blind eyes could see. "Whose voice was that?" he said, with a tremor in his own.

"A brother's," said Jason.

Sunlocks rose to his feet. "Jason?" he cried,

"Yes, Jason."

"Come to me! Come! Where are you? Let me touch you," cried Sunlocks, stretching out both his hands.

Then they fell into each other's arms, and laughed and wept for joy. After a while Jason said,—

"Sunlocks, I have brought you a message."

"Not from her, Jason?—no."

"No, not from her—from dear old Adam Fairbrother," said Jason.

"Were is he?"

"At Husavik."

"Why did you not bring him with you?"

"He could not come."

"Jason, is he ill?"

"He has crossed the desert to see you, but he can go no further."

"Jason, tell me, is he dying?"

"The good old man is calling on you night and day, 'Sunlocks!' he is crying. 'Sunlocks! my boy, my son. Sunlocks! Sunlocks!'"

"My dear father, my other father, God bless him!"

"He says he has crossed the seas to find you, and cannot die without seeing you again. And though he knows you are here, yet in his pain and trouble he forgets it, and cries, 'Come to me, my son, my Sunlocks.'"

"Now, this is the hardest lot of all," said Sunlocks, and he cast himself down on his chair. "Oh, these blind eyes! Oh, this cruel prison! Oh, for one day of freedom! Only one day, one poor simple day!"

And so he wept, and bemoaned his bitter fate.

Jason stood over him with many pains and misgivings at sight of the distress he had created. And if the eye of heaven saw Jason there, surely the suffering in his face atoned for the lie on his tongue.

"Hush, Sunlocks, hush!" he said, in a tremulous whisper. "You can have the day you wish for; and if you cannot see, there are others to lead you. Yes, it is true, it is true, for I have settled it. It is all arranged, and you are to leave this place to-morrow."

Hearing this, Michael Sunlocks made first a cry of delight, and then said after a moment, "But what of this poor old priest?"

"He is a good man, and willing to let you go," said Jason.

"But he has had warning that I may be wanted at any time," said Sunlocks, "and though his house is a prison, he has made it a home, and I would not do him a wrong to save my life."

"He knows that," said Jason, "and he says that you will come back to him though death itself should be waiting to receive you."

"He is right," said Sunlocks; "and no disaster save this one could take me from him to his peril. The good old soul! Come, let me thank him." And with that he was making for the door.

But Jason stepped between, and said, "Nay, it isn't fair to the good priest that we should make him a party to our enterprise. I have told him all that he need know, and he is content. Now, let him be ignorant of what we are doing until it is done. Then if anything happens it will appear that you have escaped."

"But I am coming back," said Sunlocks.

"Yes, yes," said Jason, "but listen. To-morrow morning, two hours before daybreak, you will go down to the bay. There is a small boat lying by the little jetty, and a fishing smack at anchor about a biscuit-throw farther out. The good woman who is [housekeeper] here will lead you——"

"Why she?" interrupted Sunlocks.

Jason paused, and said, "Have you anything against her?"

"No indeed," said Sunlocks. "A good, true woman. One who lately lost her husband, and at the same time all the cheer and hope of life. Simple and sweet, and silent, and with a voice that recalls another who was once very near and dear to me."

"Is she not so still?" said Jason.

"God knows. I scarce can tell. Sometimes I think she is dearer to me than ever, and now that I am blind I seem to see her near me always. It is only a dream, a foolish dream."

"But what if the dream came true?" said Jason.

"That cannot be," said Sunlocks. "Yet where is she? What has become of her? Is she with her father? What is she doing?"

"You shall soon know now," said Jason. "Only ask to-morrow and this good woman will take you to her."

"But why not you yourself, Jason?" said Sunlocks.

"Because I am to stay here until you return," said Jason.

"What?" cried Sunlocks. "You are to stay here?"

"Yes," said Jason.

"As bondman to the law instead of me? Is that it? Speak!" cried Sunlocks.

"And why not?" said Jason, calmly.

There was silence for a moment. Sunlocks felt about with his helpless hands until he touched Jason and then he fell sobbing upon his neck.

"Jason, Jason," he cried, "this is more than a brother's love. Ah, you do not know the risk you would run; but I know it, and I must not keep it from you. Any day, any hour, a despatch may come to the ship outside to order that I should be shot. Suppose I were to go to the dear soul who calls for me, and the despatch came in my absence—where would you be then?"

"I should be here," said Jason, simply.

"My lad, my brave lad," cried Sunlocks, "what are you saying? If you cannot think for yourself, then think for me. If what I have said were to occur, should I ever know another moment's happiness? No, never, never, though I regained my sight, as they say I may, and my place and my friends—all save one—and lived a hundred years."

Jason started at that thought, but there was no one to look upon his face under the force of it, and he wriggled with it and threw it off.

"But you will come back," he said. "If the despatch comes while you are away, I will say that you are coming, and you will come."

"I may never come back," said Sunlocks. "Only think, my lad. This is winter, and we are on the verge of the Arctic seas, with five and thirty miles of water dividing us from the mainland. He would be a bold man who would count for a day on whether in which a little fishing smack could live. And a storm might come up and keep me back."

"The same storm that would keep you back," said Jason, "would keep back the despatch. But why hunt after these chances? Have you any reason to fear that the despatch will come to-day, or to-morrow, or the next day? No, you have none. Then go, and for form's sake—just that, no more, no less—let me wait here until you return."

There was another moment's silence, and then Sunlocks said, "Is that the condition of my going?"

"Yes," said Jason.

"Did this old priest impose it?" asked Sunlocks.

Jason hesitated a moment, and answered, "Yes."

"Then I won't go," said Sunlocks, stoutly.

"If you don't," said Jason, "you will break poor old Adam's heart, for I myself will tell him that you might have come to him, and would not."

"Will you tell him why I would not?" said Sunlocks.

"No," said Jason.

There was a pause, and then Jason said, very tenderly, "Will you go, Sunlocks?"

And Sunlocks answered, "Yes."

V.

Jason slept on the form over against the narrow wooden bed of Michael Sunlocks. He lay down at midnight, and awoke four hours later. Then he stepped to the door and looked out. The night was calm and beautiful; the moon was shining, and the little world of Grimsey slept white and quiet under its coverlet of snow. Snow on the roof, snow in the valley, snow on the mountains so clear against the sky and the stars; no wind, no breeze, no sound on earth and in air save the steady chime of the sea below.

It was too early yet, and Jason went back into the house. He did not lie down again lest he should oversleep himself, but sat on his form and waited. All was silent in the home of the priest. Jason could hear nothing but the steady breathing of Sunlocks as he slept.

After awhile it began to snow, and then the moon went out, and the night became very dark.

"Now is the time," thought Jason, and after hanging a sheepskin over the little skin-covered window, he lit a candle and awakened Sunlocks.

Sunlocks rose and dressed himself without much speaking, and sometimes he sighed like a down-hearted man. But Jason rattled on with idle talk, and kindled a fire and made some coffee. And when this was done he stumbled his way through the long passages of the Iceland house until he came upon Greeba's room, and there he knocked softly, and she answered him.

She was ready, for she had not been to bed, and about her shoulders and across her breast was a sling of sheepskin, wherein she meant to carry her little Michael as he slept.

"All is ready," he whispered. "He says [he] may recover his sight. Can it be true?"

"Yes, the apothecary from Husavik said so," she answered.

"Then have no fear. Tell him who you are, for he loves you still."

And, hearing that, Greeba began to cry for joy, and to thank God that the days of her waiting were over at last.

"Two years I have lived alone," she said, "in the solitude of a loveless life and the death of a heartless home. My love has been silent all this weary, weary time, but it is to be silent no longer. At last! At last! My hour has come at last! My husband will forgive me for the deception I have practiced upon him. How can he hate me for loving him to all lengths and ends of love? Oh, that the blessed spirit that counts the throbbings of the heart would but count my life from to-day—to-day, to-day, to-day—wiping out all that is past, and leaving only the white page of what is to come."

Then from crying she fell to laughing, as softly and as gently, as if her heart grudged her voice the joy of it. She was like a child who is to wear a new feather on the morrow, and is counting the minutes until that morrow comes, too impatient to rest, and afraid to sleep lest she should awake too late. And Jason stood aside and heard both her weeping and her laughter.

He went back to Sunlocks, and found him yet more sad than before.

"Only to think," said Sunlocks, "that you, whom I thought my worst enemy, you that once followed me to slay me, should be the man of all men to risk your life for me."

"Yes, life is a fine lottery, isn't it?" said Jason, and he laughed.

"How the Almighty God tears our little passions to tatters," said Sunlocks, "and works His own ends in spite of them."

When all was ready, Jason blew out the candle, and led Sunlocks to the porch. Greeba was there, with little Michael breathing softly from the sling at her breast.

Jason opened the door. "It's very dark," he whispered, "and it is still two hours before the dawn. Sunlocks, if you had your sight already, you could not see one step before you. So give your hand to this good woman, and whatever happens hereafter never, never let it go."

And with that he joined their hands.

"Does she know my way?" said Sunlocks.

"She knows the way for both of you," said Jason. "And now go. Down at the jetty you will find two men waiting for you. Stop! Have you any money?"

"Yes," said Greeba.

"Give some to the men," said Jason. "Good-bye. I promised them a hundred kroner. Good-bye! Tell them to drop down the bay as silently as they can. Good-bye!"

"Good-bye!"

"Come," said Greeba, and she drew at the hand of Sunlocks.

"Good-bye! Good-bye!" said Jason.

But Sunlocks held back a moment, and then in a voice that faltered and broke he said, "Jason—kiss me."

At the next moment they were gone into the darkness and the falling snow—Sunlocks and Greeba, hand in hand, and their child asleep at its mother's bosom.

Jason stood a long hour at the open door, and listened. He heard the footsteps die away; he heard the creak of the crazy wooden jetty; he heard the light plash of the oars as the boat moved off; he heard the clank of the chain as the anchor was lifted; he heard the oars again as the little smack moved down the bay, and not another sound came to his ear through the silence of the night.

He looked across the headland to where the sloop of war lay outside, and he saw her lights, and their two white waterways, like pillars of silver, over the sea. All was quiet about her.

Still he stood and listened until the last faint sound of the oars had gone. By this time a woolly light had begun to creep over the mountain tops, and a light breeze came down from them.

"It is the dawn," thought Jason. "They are safe."

He went back into the house, pulled down the sheepskin from the window, and lit the candle again. After a search he found paper and pens and wax in a cupboard and sat down to write. His hand was hard, he had never been to school, and he could barely form the letters and spell the words. This was what he wrote:

"Whatever you hear, fear not for me. I have escaped, and am safe. But don't expect to see me. I can never rejoin you, for I dare not be seen. And you are going back to your beautiful island, but dear old Iceland is the only place for me. Greeba, good-bye; I shall never lose heart. Sunlocks, she has loved you, you only, all the days of her life. Good-bye. I am well and happy. God bless you both."

Having written and sealed this letter, he marked it with a cross for superscription, touched it with his lips, laid it back on the table and put a key on top of it. Then he rested his head on his hands, and for some minutes afterwards he was lost to himself in thought. "They would tell him to lie down," he thought, "and now he must be asleep. When he awakes he will be out at sea, far out, and all sail set. Before long he will find that he has been betrayed, and demand to be brought back. But they will not heed his anger, for she will have talked with them. Next week or the week after they will put in at Shetlands, and there he will get my letter. Then his face will brighten with joy, and he will cry, 'To home! To Home!' And then—even then—why not?—his sight will come back to him, and he will open his eyes and find his dream come true, and her own dear face looking up at him. At that he will cry, 'Greeba, Greeba, my Greeba,' and she will fall into his arms and he will pluck her to his breast. Then the wind will come sweeping down from the North Sea, and belly out the sail until it sings and the ropes crack and the blocks creak. And the good ship will fly along the waters like a bird to the home of the sun. Home! Home! England! England, and the little green island of her sea!"

"God bless them both," he said aloud, in a voice like a sob, but he leapt to his feet, unable to bear the flow of his thoughts. He put back the paper and pens into the cupboard, and while he was doing so he came upon a bottle of brenni-vin. He took it out and laughed, and drew the cork to take a draught. But he put it down on the table untouched. "Not yet," he said to himself, and then he stepped to the door and opened it.

The snow had ceased to fall and the day was breaking. Great shivering waifs of vapor crept along the mountain sides, and the valley was veiled in mist. But the sea was clear and peaceful, and the sloop of war lay on its dark bosom as before.

"Now for the signal," thought Jason.

In less than a minute afterwards the flag was floating from the flag-staff, and Jason stood waiting for the ship's answer. It came in due course, a clear-toned bell that rang out over the quiet waters and echoed across the land.

"It's done," thought Jason, and he went back into the house. Lifting up the brenni-vin, he took a long draught of it, and laughed as he did so. Then a longer draught, and laughed yet louder. Still another draught, and another, and another, until the bottle was emptied, and he flung it on the floor.

After that he picked up the key and the letter, and shambled out into the passage, laughing as he went.

"Where are you now, old mole?" he shouted, and again he shouted, until the little house rang with his thick voice and his peals of wild laughter.

The old priest came out of his room in his nightshirt with a lighted candle in his hand.

"God bless me, what's this?" said the old man.

"What's this? Why, your bondman, your bondman, and the key, the key," shouted Jason, and he laughed once more. "Did you think you would never see it again? Did you think I would run away and leave you? Not I, old mole, not I."

"Has he gone?" said the priest, glancing fearfully into the room.

"Gone? Why, yes, of course he has gone," laughed Jason. "They have both gone."

"Both!" said the priest, looking up inquiringly, and at sight of his face Jason laughed louder than ever.

"So you didn't see it, old mole?"

"See what?"

"That she was his wife?"

"His wife? Who?"

"Why, your housekeeper, as you called her."

"God bless my soul! And when are they coming back?"

"They are never coming back."

"Never?"

"I have taken care that they never can."

"Dear me! dear me! What does it all mean?"

"It means that the despatch is on its way from Reykjavik, and will be here to-day. Ha! ha! ha!"

"To-day? God save us! And do you intend—no, it cannot be—and yet—do you intend to die instead of him?"

"Well, and what of that? It's nothing to you, is it? And as for myself, there are old scores against me, and if death had not come to me soon, I should have gone to it."

"I'll not stand by and witness it."

"You will, you shall, you must. And listen—here is a letter. It is for him. Address it to her by the first ship to the Shetlands. The Thora, Shetlands—that will do. And now bring me some more of your brenni-vin, you good old soul, for I am going to take a sleep at last—a long sleep—a long, long sleep at last."

"God pity you! God help you! God bless you!"

"Ay, ay, pray to your God. But I'll not pray to him. He doesn't make His world for wretches like me. I'm a pagan, am I? So be it! Good-night, you dear old mole! Good-night! I'll keep to my bargain, never fear. Good-night. Never mind your brenni-vin, I'll sleep without it. Good-night! Good-night!"

Saying this, amid broken peals of unearthly laughter, Jason reeled back into the room, and clashed the door after him. The old priest, left alone in the passage, dropped the foolish candle, and wrung his hands. Then he listened at the door a moment. The unearthly laughter ceased and a burst of weeping followed it.

VI.

It was on the day after that the evil work was done. The despatch had arrived, a day's warning had been given, and four sailors, armed with muskets, had come ashore.

It was early morning, and not a soul in Grimsey who had known Michael Sunlocks was there to see. Only Sir Sigfus knew the secret, and he dare not speak. To save Jason from the death that waited for him would be to put himself in Jason's place.

The sailors drew up in a line on a piece of flat ground in front of the house whereon the snow was trodden hard. Jason came out looking strong and content. His step was firm, and his face was defiant. Fate had dogged him all his days. Only in one place, only in one hour, could he meet and beat it. This was that place, and this was that hour. He was solemn enough at last.

By his side the old priest walked, with his white head bent and his nervous hands clasped together. He was mumbling the prayers for the dying in a voice that trembled and broke. The morning was clear and cold, and all the world around was white and peaceful.

Jason took up his stand, and folded his arms behind him. As he did so the sun broke through the clouds and lit up his uplifted face and his long red hair like blood.

The sailors fired and he fell. He took their shots into his heart, the biggest heart for good or ill that ever beat in the breast of man.

VII.

Within an hour there was a great commotion on that quiet spot. Jorgen Jorgensen had come, but come too late. One glance told him everything. His order had been executed, but Sunlocks was gone and Jason was dead. Where were his miserable fears now? Where was his petty hate? Both his enemies had escaped him, and his little soul shrivelled up at sight of the wreck of their mighty passions.

"What does this mean?" he asked, looking stupidly around him.

And the old priest, transformed in one instant from the poor, timid thing he had been, turned upon him with the courage of a lion.

"It means," he said, face to face with him, "that I am a wretched coward and you are a damned tyrant."

While they stood together so, the report of a cannon came from the bay. It was a loud detonation, that seemed to heave the sea and shake the island. Jorgen knew what it meant. It meant that the English man-of-war had come.

The Danish sloop struck her colors, and Adam Fairbrother came ashore. He heard what had happened, and gathered with the others where Jason lay with his calm face towards the sky. And going down on his knees he whispered into the deaf ear, "My brave lad, your troubled life is over, your stormy soul is in its rest. Sleep on, sleep well, sleep in peace. God will not forget you."

Then rising to his feet he looked around and said, "If any man thinks that this world is not founded in justice, let him come here and see: There stands the man who is called the Governor of Iceland, and here lies his only kinsman in all the wide wilderness of men. The one is alive, the other is dead; the one is living in power and plenty, the other died like a hunted beast. But which do you choose to be: The man who has the world at his feet or the man who lies at the feet of the world?"

Jorgen Jorgensen only dropped his head while old Adam's lash fell over him. And turning upon him with heat of voice, old Adam cried, "Away with you! Go back to the place of your power. There is no one now to take it from you. But carry this word with you for your warning: Heap up your gold like the mire of the streets, grown mighty and powerful beyond any man living, and when all is done you shall be an execration and a curse and a reproach, and the poorest outcast on life's highway shall cry with me, 'Any fate, oh, merciful heaven, but not that! not that!' Away with you, away! Take your wicked feet away, for this is holy ground!"

And Jorgen Jorgensen turned about on the instant and went off hurriedly, with his face to the earth, like a whipped dog.

VIII.

They buried Jason in a piece of untouched ground over against the little wooden church. Sir Sigfus dug the grave with his own hands. It was a bed of solid lava, and in that pit of old fire they laid that young heart of flame. The sky was blue, and the sun shone on the snow so white and beautiful. It had been a dark midnight when Jason came into the world, but it was a glorious morning when he went out of it.

The good priest learning the truth from old Adam, that Jason had loved Greeba, bethought him of a way to remember the dead man's life secret at the last. He got twelve Iceland maidens and taught them an English hymn. They could not understand the words of it, but they learned to sing them to an English tune. And, clad in white, they stood round the grave of Jason, and sang these words in the tongue he loved the best:

Time, like an ever rolling stream
Bears all its sons away;
They fly forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.

On the island rock of old Grimsey, close to the margin of the [Arctic] seas, there is a pyramid of lava blocks, now honey-combed and moss-covered, over Jason's rest. And to this day the place of it is called "The place of Red Jason."

THE END.

---

A. L. BURT'S PUBLICATIONS
For Young People

BY POPULAR WRITERS.

97-99-101 Reade Street, New York.

Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden. By G. A. Henty. With 12 full-page Illustrations by Gordon Browne. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00.

The adventures of the son of a Scotch officer in French service. The boy, brought up by a Glasgow bailie, is arrested for aiding a Jacobite agent, escapes, is wrecked on the French coast, reaches Paris, and serves with the French army at Dettingen. He kills his father's foe in a duel, and escaping to the coast, shares the adventures of Prince Charlie, but finally settles happily in Scotland.

"Ronald, the hero, is very like the hero of 'Quentin Durward.' The lad's journey across France, and his hairbreadth escapes, make up as good a narrative of the kind as we have ever read. For freshness of treatment and variety of incident Mr. Henty has surpassed himself."—Spectator.

With Clive in India; or, the Beginnings of an Empire. By G. A. Henty. With 12 full-page Illustrations by Gordon Browne. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00.

The period between the landing of Clive as a young writer in India and the close of his career was critical and eventful in the extreme. At its commencement the English were traders existing on sufferance of the native princes. At its close they were masters of Bengal and of the greater part of Southern India. The author has given a full and accurate account of the events of that stirring time, and battles and sieges follow each other in rapid succession, while he combines with his narrative a tale of daring and adventure, which gives a lifelike interest to the volume.

"He has taken a period of Indian history of the most vital importance, and he has embroidered on the historical facts a story which of itself is deeply interesting. Young people assuredly will be delighted with the volume."—Scotsman.

The Lion of the North: A Tale of Gustavus Adolphus and the Wars of Religion. By G. A. Henty. With full-page Illustrations by John Schönberg. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00.

In this story Mr. Henty gives the history of the first part of the Thirty Years' War. The issue had its importance, which has extended to the present day, as it established religious freedom in Germany. The army of the chivalrous king of Sweden was largely composed of Scotchmen, and among these was the hero of the story.

"The tale is a clever and instructive piece of history and as boys may be trusted to read it conscientiously, they can hardly fail to be profited."—Times.

The Dragon and the Raven; or, The Days of King Alfred. By G. A. Henty. With full-page Illustrations by C. J. Staniland, R.I. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00.

In this story the author gives an account of the fierce struggle between Saxon and Dane for supremacy in England, and presents a vivid picture of the misery and ruin to which the country was reduced by the ravages of the sea-wolves. The hero, a young Saxon thane, takes part in all the battles fought by King Alfred. He is driven from his home, takes to the sea and resists the Danes on their own element, and being pursued by them up the Seine, is present at the long and desperate siege of Paris.

"Treated in a manner most attractive to the boyish reader."—Athenæum.

The Young Carthaginian: A Story of the Times of Hannibal. By G. A. Henty. With full-page Illustrations by C. J. Staniland, R.I. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00.

Boys reading the history of the Punic Wars have seldom a keen appreciation of the merits of the contest. That it was at first a struggle for empire, and afterward for existence on the part of Carthage, that Hannibal was a great and skillful general, that he defeated the Romans at Trebia, Lake Trasimenus, and Cannæ, and all but took Rome, represents pretty nearly the sum total of their knowledge. To let them know more about this momentous struggle for the empire of the world Mr. Henty has written this story, which not only gives in graphic style a brilliant description of a most interesting period of history, but is a tale of exciting adventure sure to secure the interest of the reader.

"Well constructed and vividly told. From first to last nothing stays the interest of the narrative. It bears us along as on a stream whose current varies in direction, but never loses its force."—Saturday Review.

In Freedom's Cause: A Story of Wallace and Bruce. By G. A. Henty. With full-page Illustrations by Gordon Browne. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00.

In this story the author relates the stirring tale of the Scottish War of Independence. The extraordinary valor and personal prowess of Wallace and Bruce rival the deeds of the mythical heroes of chivalry, and indeed at one time Wallace was ranked with these legendary personages. The researches of modern historians have shown, however, that he was a living, breathing man—and a valiant champion. The hero of the tale fought under both Wallace and Bruce, and while the strictest historical accuracy has been maintained with respect to public events, the work is full of "hairbreadth 'scapes" and wild adventure.

"It is written in the author's best style. Full of the wildest and most remarkable achievements, it is a tale of great interest, which a boy, once he has begun it, will not willingly put on one side."—The Schoolmaster.

With Lee in Virginia: A Story of the American Civil War. By G. A. Henty. With full-page Illustrations by Gordon Browne. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00.

The story of a young Virginian planter, who, after bravely proving his sympathy with the slaves of brutal masters, serves with no less courage and enthusiasm under Lee and Jackson through the most exciting events of the struggle. He has many hairbreadth escapes, is several times wounded and twice taken prisoner; but his courage and readiness and, in two cases, the devotion of a black servant and of a runaway slave whom he had assisted, bring him safely through all difficulties.

"One of the best stories for lads which Mr. Henty has yet written. The picture is full of life and color, and the stirring and romantic incidents are skillfully blended with the personal interest and charm of the story."—Standard.

By England's Aid; or, The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604). By G. A. Henty. With full-page Illustrations by Alfred Pearse, and Maps. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00.

The story of two English lads who go to Holland as pages in the service of one of "the fighting Veres." After many adventures by sea and land, one of the lads finds himself on board a Spanish ship at the time of the defeat of the Armada, and escapes only to fall into the hands of the Corsairs. He is successful in getting back to Spain under the protection of a wealthy merchant, and regains his native country after the capture of Cadiz.

"It is an admirable book for youngsters. It overflows with stirring incident and exciting adventure, and the color of the era and of the scene are finely reproduced. The illustrations add to its attractiveness."—Boston Gazette.

By Right of Conquest; or, With Cortez in Mexico. By G. A. Henty. With full-page Illustrations by W. S. Stacey, and Two Maps. 12mo, cloth, price $1.50.

The conquest of Mexico by a small band of resolute men under the magnificent leadership of Cortez is always rightly ranked among the most romantic and daring exploits in history. With this as the ground work of his story Mr. Henty has interwoven the adventures of an English youth, Roger Hawkshaw, the sole survivor of the good ship Swan, which had sailed from a Devon port to challenge the mercantile supremacy of the Spaniards in the New World. He is beset by many perils among the natives, but is saved by his own judgment and strength, and by the devotion of an Aztec princess. At last by a ruse he obtains the protection of the Spaniards, and after the fall of Mexico he succeeds in regaining his native shore, with a fortune and a charming Aztec bride.

"'By Right of Conquest' is the nearest approach to a perfectly successful historical tale that Mr. Henty has yet published."—Academy.

In the Reign of Terror: The Adventures of a Westminster Boy. By G. A. Henty. With full-page Illustrations by J. Schönberg. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00.

Harry Sandwith, a Westminster boy, becomes a resident at the chateau of a French marquis, and after various adventures accompanies the family to Paris at the crisis of the Revolution. Imprisonment and death reduce their number, and the hero finds himself beset by perils with the three young daughters of the house in his charge. After hairbreadth escapes they reach Nantes. There the girls are condemned to death in the coffin-ships, but are saved by the unfailing courage of their boy protector.

"Harry Sandwith, the Westminster boy, may fairly be said to beat Mr. Henty's record. His adventures will delight boys by the audacity and peril they depict.... The story is one of Mr. Henty's best."—Saturday Review.

With Wolfe in Canada; or, The Winning of a Continent. By G. A. Henty. With full-page Illustrations by Gordon Browne. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00.

In the present volume Mr. Henty gives an account of the struggle between Britain and France for supremacy in the North American continent. On the issue of this war depended not only the destinies of North America, but to a large extent those of the mother countries themselves. The fall of Quebec decided that the Anglo-Saxon race should predominate in the New World; that Britain, and not France, should take the lead among the nations of Europe; and that English and American commerce, the English language, and English literature, should spread right round the globe.

"It is not only a lesson in history as instructively as it is graphically told, but also a deeply interesting and often thrilling tale of adventure and peril by flood and field."—Illustrated London News.

True to the Old Flag: A Tale of the American War of Independence. By G. A. Henty. With full-page Illustrations by Gordon Browne. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00.

In this story the author has gone to the accounts of officers who took part in the conflict, and lads will find that in no war in which American and British soldiers have been engaged did they behave with greater courage and good conduct. The historical portion of the book being accompanied with numerous thrilling adventures with the redskins on the shores of Lake Huron, a story of exciting interest is interwoven with the general narrative and carried through the book.

"Does justice to the pluck and determination of the British soldiers during the unfortunate struggle against American emancipation. The son of an American loyalist, who remains true to our flag, falls among the hostile redskins in that very Huron country which has been endeared to us by the exploits of Hawkeye and Chingachgook."—The Times.

The Lion of St. Mark: A Tale of Venice in the Fourteenth Century. By G. A. Henty. With full-page Illustrations by Gordon Browne. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00.

A story of Venice at a period when her strength and splendor were put to the severest tests. The hero displays a fine sense and manliness which carry him safely through an atmosphere of intrigue, crime, and bloodshed. He contributes largely to the victories of the Venetians at Porto d'Anzo and Chioggia, and finally wins the hand of the daughter of one of the chief men of Venice.

"Every boy should read 'The Lion of St. Mark.' Mr. Henty has never produced a story more delightful, more wholesome, or more vivacious."—Saturday Review.

A Final Reckoning: A Tale of Bush Life in Australia. By G. A. Henty. With full-page Illustrations by W. B. Wollen. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00.

The hero, a young English lad, after rather a stormy boyhood, emigrates to Australia, and gets employment as an officer in the mounted police. A few years of active work on the frontier, where he has many a brush with both natives and bushrangers, gain him promotion to a captaincy, and he eventually settles down to the peaceful life of a squatter.

"Mr. Henty has never published a more readable, a more carefully constructed, or a better written story than this."—Spectator.

Under Drake's Flag: A Tale of the Spanish Main. By G. A. Henty. With full-page Illustrations by Gordon Browne. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00.

A story of the days when England and Spain struggled for supremacy of the sea. The heroes sail as lads with Drake in the Pacific expedition, and in his great voyage of circumnavigation. The historical portion of the story is absolutely to be relied upon, but this will perhaps be less attractive than the great variety of exciting adventure through which the young heroes pass course of their voyages.

"A book of adventure, where the hero meets with experience enough, one would think, to turn his hair gray."—Harper's Monthly Magazine.

By Sheer Pluck: A Tale of the Ashanti War. By G. A. Henty. With full-page Illustrations by Gordon Browne. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00.

The author has woven, in a tale of thrilling interest, all the details of the Ashanti campaign, of which he was himself a witness. His hero, after many exciting adventures in the interior, is detained a prisoner by the king just before the outbreak of the war, but escapes, and accompanies the English expedition on their march to Coomassie.

"Mr. Henty keeps up his reputation as a writer of boys' stories. 'By Sheer Pluck' will be eagerly read."—Athenæum.

By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic. By G. A. Henty. With full-page Illustrations by Maynard Brown, and 4 Maps. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00.

In this story Mr. Henty traces the adventures and brave deeds of an English boy in the household of the ablest man of his age—William the Silent. Edward Martin, the son of an English sea-captain, enters the service of the Prince as a volunteer, and is employed by him in many dangerous and responsible missions, in the discharge of which he passes through the great sieges of the time. He ultimately settles down as Sir Edward Martin.

"Boys with a turn for historical research will be enchanted with the book while the rest who only care for adventure will be students in spite of themselves."—St. James' Gazette.

St. George for England: A Tale of Cressy and Poitiers. By G. A. Henty. With full-page Illustrations by Gordon Browne. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00.

No portion of English history is more crowded with great events than that of the reign of Edward III. Cressy and Poitiers; the destruction of the Spanish fleet; the plague of the Black Death; the Jacquerie rising; these are treated by the author in "St. George for England." The hero of the story, although of good family, begins life as a London apprentice, but after countless adventures and perils becomes by valor and good conduct the squire, and at last the trusted friend of the Black Prince.

"Mr. Henty has developed for himself a type of historical novel for boys which bids fair to supplement, on their behalf, the historical labors of Sir Walter Scott in the land of fiction."—The Standard.

[Captain] Kidd's Gold: The True Story of an Adventurous Sailor Boy. By James Franklin Fitts. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00.

There is something fascinating to the average youth in the very idea of buried treasure. A vision arises before his eyes of swarthy Portuguese and Spanish rascals, with black beards and gleaming eyes—sinister-looking fellows who once on a time haunted the Spanish Main, sneaking out from some hidden creek in their long, low schooner, of picaroonish rake and sheer, to attack an unsuspecting trading craft. There were many famous sea rovers in their day, but none more celebrated than Capt. Kidd. Perhaps the most fascinating tale of all is Mr. Fitts' true story of an adventurous American boy, who receives from his dying father an ancient bit of vellum, which the latter obtained in a curious way. The document bears obscure directions purporting to locate a certain island in the Bahama group, and a considerable treasure buried there by two of Kidd's crew. The hero of this book, Paul Jones Garry, is an ambitious, persevering lad, of salt-water New England ancestry, and his efforts to reach the island and secure the money form one of the most absorbing tales for our youth that has come from the press.

Captain Bayley's Heir: A Tale of the Gold Fields of California. By G. A. Henty. With full-page Illustrations by H. M. Paget. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00.

A frank, manly lad and his cousin are rivals in the heirship of a considerable property. The former falls into a trap laid by the latter, and while under a false accusation of theft foolishly leaves England for America. He works his passage before the mast, joins a small band of hunters, crosses a tract of country infested with Indians to the Californian gold diggings, and is successful both as digger and trader.

"Mr. Henty is careful to mingle instruction with entertainment; and the humorous touches, especially in the sketch of John Holl, the Westminster dustman, Dickens himself could hardly have excelled."—Christian Leader.

For Name and Fame; or, Through Afghan Passes. By G. A. Henty. With full-page Illustrations by Gordon Browne. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00.

An interesting story of the last war in Afghanistan. The hero, after being wrecked and going through many stirring adventures among the Malays, finds his way to Calcutta and enlists in a regiment proceeding to join the army at the Afghan passes. He accompanies the force under General Roberts to the Peiwar Kotal, is wounded, taken prisoner, carried to Cabul, whence he is transferred to Candahar, and takes part in the final defeat of the army of Ayoub Khan.

"The best feature of the book—apart from the interest of its scenes of adventure—is its honest effort to do justice to the patriotism of the Afghan people."—Daily News.

Captured by Apes: The Wonderful Adventures of a Young Animal Trainer. By Harry Prentice. 12mo, cloth, $1.00.

The scene of this tale is laid on an island in the Malay Archipelago. Philip Garland, a young animal collector and trainer, of New York, sets sail for Eastern seas in quest of a new stock of living curiosities. The vessel is wrecked off the coast of Borneo and young Garland, the sole survivor of the disaster, is cast ashore on a small island, and captured by the apes that overrun the place. The lad discovers that the ruling spirit of the monkey tribe is a gigantic and vicious baboon, whom he identifies as Goliah, an animal at one time in his possession and with whose instruction he had been especially diligent. The brute recognizes him, and with a kind of malignant satisfaction puts his former master through the same course of training he had himself experienced with a faithfulness of detail which shows how astonishing is monkey recollection. Very novel indeed is the way by which the young man escapes death. Mr. Prentice has certainly worked a new vein on juvenile fiction, and the ability with which he handles a difficult subject stamps him as a writer of undoubted skill.

The Bravest of the Brave; or, With Peterborough in Spain. By G. A. Henty. With full-page Illustrations by H. M. Paget. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00.

There are few great leaders whose lives and actions have so completely fallen into oblivion as those of the Earl of Peterborough. This is largely due to the fact that they were overshadowed by the glory and successes of Marlborough. His career as general extended over little more than a year, and yet, in that time, he showed a genius for warfare which has never been surpassed.

"Mr. Henty never loses sight of the moral purpose of his work—to enforce the doctrine of courage and truth. Lads will read 'The Bravest of the Brave' with pleasure and profit; of that we are quite sure."—Daily Telegraph.

The Cat of Bubastes: A Story of Ancient Egypt. By G. A. Henty. With full-page Illustrations. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00.

A story which will give young readers an unsurpassed insight into the customs of the Egyptian people. Amuba, a prince of the Rebu nation, is carried with his charioteer Jethro into slavery. They become inmates of the house of Ameres, the Egyptian high-priest, and are happy in his service until the priest's son accidentally kills the sacred cat of Bubastes. In an outburst of popular fury Ameres is killed, and it rests with Jethro and Amuba to secure the escape of the high-priest's son and daughter.

"The story, from the critical moment of the killing of the sacred cat to the perilous exodus into Asia with which it closes, is very skillfully constructed and full of exciting adventures. It is admirably illustrated."—Saturday Review.

With Washington at Monmouth: A Story of Three Philadelphia Boys. By James Otis. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00.

Three Philadelphia boys, Seth Graydon "whose mother conducted a boarding-house which was patronized by the British officers;" Enoch Ball, "son of that Mrs. Ball whose dancing school was situated on Letitia Street," and little Jacob, son of "Chris, the Baker," serve as the principal characters. The story is laid during the winter when Lord Howe held possession of the city, and the lads aid the cause by assisting the American spies who make regular and frequent visits from Valley Forge. One reads here of home-life in the captive city when bread was scarce among the people of the lower classes, and a reckless prodigality shown by the British officers, who passed the winter in feasting and merry-making while the members of the patriot army but a few miles away were suffering from both cold and hunger. The story abounds with pictures of Colonial life skillfully drawn, and the glimpses of Washington's soldiers which are given show that the work has not been hastily done, or without considerable study.

Transcriber's corrections

• [p. 14]: to her degradation[degredation], she had not murmured at the
• [p. 30]: from the deposits of his memory. The Tynwald[Tynwalk], the Prince,
• [p. 35]: spinster[spinister], of the parish of Maughold, and Stephen
• [p. 45]: over the low murmur[murmer] of the sea's gentle swell. "Now is
• [p. 47]: for the house of the Governor[Governer]. It was pointed out to him,
• [p. 55]: "Maybe so, my ven[veen], maybe so."
• [p. 94]: of twenty hard[hards] fists on the table, the rough toast was called
• [p. 95]: more. Very soon they were outside[ouside] the little house in
• [p. 95]: lay and tossed in a strong delirium[delirum]. The wet clothes
• [p. 96]: Nary Crowe's[Browe's] cup. This she did, and more than this, seeming
• [p. 97]: every repetition, and the others joined[foined] him, struggling to
• [p. 109]: her relations with Jason she remembered[rememberd] that she was the
• [p. 112]: this time[sime] suffered curtailment. He was ruining himself at
• [p. 113]: Now the rapid impoverishment of the Governor[Govenor] was forcing
• [p. 114]: the cry of the poor reached the Governor[Govenor] at Castletown. No
• [p. 117]: The Governor was right that there would be no sale[sail] for
• [p. 122]: his seat like one who is dumbfounded[dumfounded].
• [p. 140]: in fury at the bare thought of either being hands[hinds] on their
• [p. 141]: end of it all was a trial for ejectment at Deemster's[Deemsteer's] Court
• [p. 141]: when the six good men of Maughold had clambered[clamered] up to
• [p. 142]: fasten on somebody's[someboby's] throat, or pick up something as a dog
• [p. 145]: better than four years have passed[pass] away since I left the
• [p. 147]: daughter of the Governor-General[Govenor-General]. His name was Jorgen
• [p. 151]: it for Hafnafiord[Hafnafjord]? Certainly it may have put in at the
• [p. 151]: men should have a store like the widow's curse[cruse] to
• [p. 164]: The service came to an end, and he strode[stroke] off, turning
• [p. 168]: given to strange outbursts[outburts] when alone, was as simple and
• [p. 170]: "Jorgen[Jogen] Jorgensen," said the old man, grinning.
• [p. 181]: even to the third and fourth generation of his[His] children."
• [p. 188]: to it and shot the heavy wooden bar[barr] that bolted it.
• [p. 191]: The spokesman of the Court was a middle-aged[middled-aged] man,
• [p. 199]: While the storm lasted all Reykjavik[Reyjavik] lay asleep, and
• [p. 200]: she spoke, lest[least] in the fervor of her plea the Bishop should
• [p. 207]: Thurstan[Thurston] mounted the till-board of his own cart, and
• [p. 208]: "Ay," said Stean[Steam].
• [p. 212]: "Ay[An], and a pretty penny it has cost us to fetch it," said
• [p. 222]: her mouth. But he recked[wrecked] nothing of this, and only
• [p. 240]: Then, with a sense of his wise brother's pitiable[pitable] blunderheadedness,
• [p. 242]: the space within that had been allotted[alloted] to the public was
• [p. 244]: "It is no doubt your concernment[concerment] to know what events
• [p. 244]: I can only claim your indulgence in withholding[witholding] that part
• [p. 244]: that dead stillness[stillnes] to rise to a cry.
• [p. 247]: exalted[axalted]. Our young President has this day sat down in
• [p. 267]: rise but she[he] could not, while its terrified eyeballs stood out
• [p. 268]: safe, and with its load squared and righted on her[his] back.
• [p. 279]: And while their warders dozed[dosed] in the heat of the noonday
• [p. 280]: us two. You're [a] gentleman, and I'm only a rough fellow.
• [p. 321]: plunging along in the darkness[darknes], trusting solely to the sight
• [p. 323]: he had been the head and centre. But when the people[peo]
• [p. 324]: blind man?" So the end of all was that Sunlocks[Sunlock] was put
• [p. 342]: "At Akureyri[Akuyeri], Husavik, Reykjavik, the desert—everywhere,
• [p. 342]: "Jason," she said again, "it was not altogether[altogeter] my fault.
• [p. 348]: The good woman who is housekeeper[houskeeper] here will lead you——"
• [p. 350]: "All is ready," he whispered. "He says he[be] may recover
• [p. 357]: of the Arctic[Artic] seas, there is a pyramid of lava blocks, now
• [p. 6]: Captain[Captain's] Kidd's Gold: The True Story of an Adventurous Sailor

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