VII.
Within an hour there was a great commotion on that quiet spot. Jorgen Jorgensen had come, but come too late. One glance told him everything. His order had been executed, but Sunlocks was gone and Jason was dead. Where were his miserable fears now? Where was his petty hate? Both his enemies had escaped him, and his little soul shrivelled up at sight of the wreck of their mighty passions.
"What does this mean?" he asked, looking stupidly around him.
And the old priest, transformed in one instant from the poor, timid thing he had been, turned upon him with the courage of a lion.
"It means," he said, face to face with him, "that I am a wretched coward and you are a damned tyrant."
While they stood together so, the report of a cannon came from the bay. It was a loud detonation, that seemed to heave the sea and shake the island. Jorgen knew what it meant. It meant that the English man-of-war had come.
The Danish sloop struck her colors, and Adam Fairbrother came ashore. He heard what had happened, and gathered with the others where Jason lay with his calm face towards the sky. And going down on his knees he whispered into the deaf ear, "My brave lad, your troubled life is over, your stormy soul is in its rest. Sleep on, sleep well, sleep in peace. God will not forget you."
Then rising to his feet he looked around and said, "If any man thinks that this world is not founded in justice, let him come here and see: There stands the man who is called the Governor of Iceland, and here lies his only kinsman in all the wide wilderness of men. The one is alive, the other is dead; the one is living in power and plenty, the other died like a hunted beast. But which do you choose to be: The man who has the world at his feet or the man who lies at the feet of the world?"
Jorgen Jorgensen only dropped his head while old Adam's lash fell over him. And turning upon him with heat of voice, old Adam cried, "Away with you! Go back to the place of your power. There is no one now to take it from you. But carry this word with you for your warning: Heap up your gold like the mire of the streets, grown mighty and powerful beyond any man living, and when all is done you shall be an execration and a curse and a reproach, and the poorest outcast on life's highway shall cry with me, 'Any fate, oh, merciful heaven, but not that! not that!' Away with you, away! Take your wicked feet away, for this is holy ground!"