"My curse on him and his forgiveness," cried Jason, rising suddenly and bringing down his fist on the table. "Who is he that he should forgive me? It has not been for his sake that I have been silent, with the devil at my side urging me to speak. And for all that you have made me to suffer he shall yet pay double. Let it go on; let him send me away; let him bury me at his mines. But I shall live to find him yet. Something tells me that I shall not die until I have met with that man face to face."
And Greeba went back home with these mad words ringing in her ears. "It is useless to try," she thought, "I have done all I can. My husband is before everything. I shall say nothing to him now."
None the less she cried very bitterly, and was still crying when at bedtime her little English maid came up to her and chattered of the news of the day. It seemed that some Danish store-keepers on the cheapstead had lately been arrested as spies, brought to trial, and condemned.
When Greeba awoke next morning, after a restless night, while the town still lay asleep, and only the croak of the ravens from the rocks above the fiord broke the silence of the late dawn, she heard the hollow tread of many footsteps on the frozen snow of the Thingvellir road, and peering out through the window, which was coated with hoar frost, she saw a melancholy procession. Three men, sparsely clad in thin tunics, snow stockings and skin caps, walked heavily in file, chained together hand to hand and leg to leg, with four armed warders, closely muffled to the ears, riding leisurely beside them. They were prisoners bound for the sulphur mines of Krisuvik. The first of them was Jason, and he swung along with his long stride and his shorn head thrown back and his pallid face held up. The other two were old Thomsen and young Polvesen, the Danish store-keepers.
It was more than Greeba could bear to look upon that sight, for it brought back the memory of that other sight on that other morning, when Jason came leaping down to her from the mountains, over gorse and cushag and hedge and ditch. So she turned her head away and covered her eyes with her hands. And then one—two—three—four—the heavy footsteps went on over the snow.
The next thing she knew was that her English maid was in her bedroom, saying, "Some strangers in the kitchen are asking for you. They are Englishmen, and have just come ashore, and they call themselves your brothers."
CHAPTER X.
The Fairbrothers.
Now when the Fairbrothers concluded that they could never give rest to their tender consciences until they had done right by their poor sister Greeba they set themselves straightway to consider the ways and means. Ballacraine they must sell in order that its proceeds might be taken to Greeba as her share and interest; but Ballacraine belonged to Jacob, and another provision would forthwith need to be made for him. So after much arguing and some nagging across the hearth of the kitchen at Lague it was decided that each of Jacob's five brothers should mortgage his farm to one-sixth its value, and that the gross sum of their five-sixths should be Jacob's for his share. This arrangement would have the disadvantage of leaving Jacob without land, but he showed a magnanimous spirit in that relation. "Don't trouble about me," said he, "it's sweet and nice to do a kindness to your own brothers."
And four of his brethren applauded that sentiment, but Thurstan curled up his red nose and thought, "Aw, yes, of coorse, a powerful big boiler of brotherly love the little miser keeps going under his weskit."