Stephen looked down at the child and his bowels yearned over it. It cost him a struggle not to kiss it; but no, that would only make the task harder.
Suddenly a new thought smote him. What had this child done that he should take its life? Who was he that he should rob it of what he could never give it again? By what right did he dare to come between this living soul and heaven? When did the Almighty God tell him what the after life of this babe was to be? Stephen trembled at the thought. It was like a voice from the skies calling on him to stop, and a hand reaching out of them to snatch the child from his grasp.
What he had intended to do was not to be! Heaven had set its face against it! Little Sunlocks was not to die! Little Sunlocks was to live! Thank God! Oh! Thank God!
But late that night a group of people standing at their doors on the beach at Port Lague saw a tall man in his shirt sleeves go by in the darkness, with a sleeping child in his arms. The man was Stephen Orry, and he was sobbing like a woman whose heart is broken. The child was little Sunlocks, and he was being carried back to his mother's home.
The people hailed Stephen and told him that a foreigner from a ship in the bay had been asking for him that evening. They had sent the man along to Port-y-Vullin.
Stephen hurried home with fear in his heart. In five minutes he was there, and then his life's blood ran cold. He found the house empty, except for his wife, and she lay outstretched on the floor. She was cold—she was dead; and in clay on the wall above her head, these words were written in the Icelandic tongue, "So is Patricksen avenged—signed S. Patricksen."
Avenged! Oh, powers of Heaven, that drive the petty passions of men like dust before you!
CHAPTER VI.
The Little World of Boy and Girl.
Three days later the bad lottery of Liza Killey's life and death was played out and done. On the morning of the fourth day, some time before the dawn, though the mists were rolling in front of it, Stephen Orry rose in his silent hut in Port-y-Vullin, lit a fire, cooked a hasty meal, wakened, washed, dressed and fed little Sunlocks, then nailed up the door from the outside, lifted the child to his shoulders, and turned his face towards the south. When he passed through Laxey the sun stood high, and the dust of the roads was being driven in their faces. It was long past noon when he came to Douglas, and at a little shop by the harbor-bridge he bought a penny worth of barley cake, gave half to Sunlocks, put the other half into his pocket, and pushed on with longer strides. The twilight was deepening when he reached Castletown, and there he inquired for the house of the [Governor]. It was pointed out to him, and through heavy iron gates, up a winding carriage-way lined with elms and bordered with daffodils, he made towards the only door he saw.