The Bondman: A New Saga

by Sir Hall Caine

"Dangerous trifling," said the spokesman. "When you seize a mad dog you strangle it."

"Ay, ay," cried many voices at once, and great excitement prevailed.

The old Bishop drew back with a sigh of relief. He loved Michael Sunlocks and had been eager to save him. He pitied Greeba, and for her sake also had been anxious to protect her husband. But from the moment he saw Jason and thought, "That man's heart is dead within him," his love had struggled with his sense of duty. As the trial went on he had remembered Jason and recalled his bitter history, and seized with a strong sympathy he had strained every nerve to keep back his punishment. He had done all he could do, he had nothing to reproach himself with, and full of a deep and secret joy at the certainty of the safety of Sunlocks, he now fell back that the law might take its course.

The Court was counted out, and then the Bishop turned for the last time to Jason, and delivered judgment. "The sentence of this Court," he said "is that you be removed from here to the Sulpher Mines, and be kept there six months certain, and as long thereafter as you refuse to take the Oath of Peace pledging yourself forever, as long as you live or the world endures, to be at one with your enemy as brothers before all men living."

Now Greeba alone knew the truth about Jason. When she had fled from Mann without word or warning it had not been out of fear of him, but of her brothers. Her meeting with Michael Sunlocks, her short stay with the good old Bishop Petersen, her marriage and the festival that followed, had passed her by like a dream. Then came the first short parting with Sunlocks when he had said, "I must leave you for a fortnight, for the men I sent in search of your father have blundered and returned without him." She had cried a little at that, and he had kissed her, and made a brave show of his courage, though she could see the tears in his own big shining eyes. But it was all a dream, a sweet and happy dream, and only by the coming of Jason had the dream been broken.

Then followed her terror, her plea, her fear for her husband's life, her defiance of Jason, and the charge she made against him.

And the first burst of her passion over, she had thought to herself, "My husband is safe, but Jason will now tell all and I shall be a lost and ruined woman," for nothing had she yet said to Michael Sunlocks concerning the man who had wooed and won and released her during the long years of his silence and her trouble. "He will hear the story now," she thought, "and not from my lips but from Jason's."

Being then so far immersed she could not but go on, and so she had allowed herself to be led to the courthouse. No one there had thought to ask her if she had known anything of Jason before that day, and she on her part had said nothing of knowing him. But when Jason had looked at her with eyes of reproach that seemed to go through her soul, he seemed to be saying, "This is but half the truth. Dare you not tell the rest?"

Then listening to the lying of other witnesses, and looking up at Jason's face, so full of pain, and seeing how silent he was under cruel perjury, she remembered that this man's worst crime had been his love of her, and so she staggered to her feet to confess everything.

When she came to herself after that, she was back in her own home—her new home, the home of her happy dream, her husband's home and hers, and there her first fear returned to her. "He will tell all," she thought, "and evil tongues will make it worse, and shame will fall upon my husband, and I shall be lost, lost, lost."