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.