"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?