"And is this all they say at home of Oscar Stephenson?"
"All? Not a tenth of it."
"Then his very name must be hated in Iceland?"
"Hated? Execrated, sir. Not that anybody cares about the old Governor; he is dead and gone with the rotten system he tried to support, but as for his son, nobody can say bad enough about him."
"So that if he had lived and come back alive----"
"He would have been hounded out of the country, sir."
"Just so, just so," said Christian Christiansson, and rising with a startling gesture he stumbled back to his stateroom.
The merchant looked after him uneasily. "Who the deuce can he be, I wonder!"
"I wonder!" said the captain, pulling at his extinguished pipe.
It was impossible! The odium attaching to the name of Oscar Stephenson made it impossible that Christian Christiansson could ever reveal his identity. He had thought that the dust of death might cover his transgressions, but rumor and report had kept them alive and magnified them. Even the effort of his family to conceal the truth about his offenses had given birth to falsehood and fostered slander.