"Then to the rolling Heav'n itself I cried.
Asking, 'What Lamp had Destiny to guide
Her little Children stumbling in the Dark?'
And--'A blind Understanding!' Heav'n replied."
THE PRODIGAL SON
PART I
"The worldly hope men set their hearts upon
Turns ashes--or it prospers; and anon
Like Snow upon the desert's dusty face
Lighting a little hour or two--is gone."
I
Iceland had never looked more wonderful. The stern old Northland, which in the daylight bears always and everywhere on its sphinx-like face the mutilating imprint of the burnt-out fires of ten thousand ages, and would seem to be dead but for the murmurings of volcanic life in its sulfurous womb, lay in the autumn moonlight like a great creature asleep--calm, august, and blue as the night.
The moon was still shining, and everything seemed to swim in the soft grace of its silvery light, houses, ships, fishing-boats, the fiord in front, the lake behind, the black moorland around, and the snow-tipped mountains beyond--when the little wooden capital began to stir in the morning.
It was the day appointed for the annual sheep-gathering at Thingvellir; the sheep-fold was thirty odd miles away; there were no railways or coaches, and few roads in Iceland, and hence the younger townspeople who intended to make a holiday of the event had to set out early on their little shaggy ponies.
As the clock struck four in the tower of the cathedral Thora Neilsen, the daughter of Factor Neilsen, awoke with a start, and leapt out of bed. She had drawn up her blinds the night before so that the daylight might waken her in the morning, but before she realized that it was the moonlight that had been playing upon her eyelids she was standing in the middle of the floor and crying in the ringing voice of youth and happiness:
"Aunt Margret! Auntie! I've overslept myself! I'll be late! Auntie! Auntie!"