"God veils His face from us, Factor. We are only His little children. He has His own plans and purposes."
"Good Lord! sir," said the Factor in a husky croak, "what purpose can there be in blinding a man for fifteen years and letting him break up all his friendships?"
He was walking to and fro to calm his nerves under the shock as of a moral earthquake.
"If I have been wrong about Magnus I may have been wrong about Oscar, also. I got frightened when he signed my name, so I helped to send him out of Iceland. And now he is dead!"
Christian Christiansson's head was down--his throat was surging.
"His father is dead, too. We quarrelled about our children, and now it seems it all began with a blunder! He was my friend for fifty years, and I've never had another. There's no such thing as making an old friend in your old age, sir, and when your friends are gone the world gets lonely. Perhaps I was hard on Oscar, too. He was my godson. I liked the boy in spite of everything, and he always came to see the old man the minute he set foot in Iceland."
Christian Christiansson wanted to throw off all disguise and cry, "And I'm here again, godfather," but he could not and dared not speak. He rose to go, and the Factor took him to the door.
"I'll come again before I leave the country," he said at the last moment, "and then perhaps I'll have something to say to you."
When the Factor returned to the sitting-room, looking like the same grey rock but with clouds enveloping it, Aunt Margret, who had scarcely moved, said in the frightened voice of one who has seen a ghost:
"Do you know who that was?"