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.