The lonely valley of Thingvellir was alive that morning with a great throng of people. They came from the west by the Chasm of All Men, from the east by the Chasm of Ravens, and from the south by the lake. Troop after troop flowed into the vast amphitheatre that lies between dark hills and great jokulls tipped with snow. They pitched their tents on the green patch, under the fells to the north, and tying their ponies together, head to tail, they turned them loose to graze. Hundreds of tents were there by early morning, gleaming white in the sunlight, and tens of hundreds of ponies, shaggy and unkempt, grubbed among the short grass that grew between.
Near the middle of the plain stood the Mount of Laws, a lava island of oval shape, surrounded by a narrow stream, and bounded by overhanging walls cut deep with fissures. Around this mount the people gathered. There friend met friend, foe met foe, rival met rival, northmen met southmen, the Westmann islander met the Grimsey islander, and the man from Seydisfiord met the man from Patriksfiord. And because Althing gathered only every other year, many musty kisses went round, with snuffboxes after them, among those who had not met before for two long years.
It was a vast assembly, chiefly of men, in their homespun and sheepskins and woollen stockings, cross-gartered with hemp from ankle to knee. Women, too, and young girls and children were there, all wearing their Sunday best. And in those first minutes of their meeting, before Althing began, the talk was of crops and stock, of the weather, and of what sheep had been lost in the last two hard winters. The day had opened brightly, with clear air and bright sunshine, but the blue sky had soon become overcast with threatening clouds, and this lead to stories of strange signs in the heavens, and unaccustomed noises on the earth and under it.
A man from the south spoke of rain of black dust as having fallen three nights before until the ground was covered deep with it. Another man, from the foot of Hekla, told of a shock of earthquake that had lately been felt there, travelling northeast to southwest. A third man spoke of grazing his horse on the wild oats of a glen that he had passed through, with a line of some twenty columns of smokeburst suddenly upon his view. All this seemed to pass from lip to lip in the twinkling of an eye, and when young men asked what the signs might mean, old men lifted both hands and shook their heads, and prayed that the visitations which their island had seen before might never come to it again.
Such was the talk, and such the mood of the people when the hour arrived for the business of Althing to begin, and then all eyes turned to the little wooden Thing House by the side of the church, wherein the Thing-men were wont to gather for their procession to the Mount of Laws. And when the hour passed, and the procession had not yet appeared, the whisper went around that the Governor had not arrived, and that the delay was meant to humor him. At that the people began to mutter among themselves, for the slumbering fire of their national spirit had been stirred. By his tardy coming the Governor meant to humiliate them! But, Governor or no Governor, let Althing begin its sitting. Who was the Governor that Althing should wait for him? What was Althing that it should submit to the whim or the will of any Governor?
Within the Thing House, as well as outside of it, such hot protests must have had sway, for presently the door of the little place was thrown open and the six and thirty Thing-men came out.
Then followed the solemn ceremonies that had been observed on the spot for nigh a thousand years. First walked the Chief Judge, carrying the sword of justice, and behind him walked his magistrates and Thing-men. They ascended to the Mount by a flight of steps cut out of its overhanging walls. At the same moment another procession, that of the old Bishop and his clergy, came out of the church and ascended to the Mount by a similar flight of steps cut out of the opposite side of it. The two companies parted, the Thing-men to the north and the clergy to the south, leaving the line of this natural causeway open and free, save for the Judge, who stood at the head of it, with the Bishop to the right of him and the Governor's empty place to the left.
And first the Bishop offered prayer for the sitting of Althing that was then to begin.
"Thou Judge of Israel," he prayed, in the terrible words which had descended to him through centuries, "Thou that sittest upon the cherubims, come down and help Thy people.O, most mighty God, who art more pleased with the sacrifice of thanksgiving than with the burnt offerings of bullocks and goats, keep now our mouths from guile and deceit, from slander and from obloquy. O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, endue Thy ministers with righteousness. Give them wisdom that they may judge wisely. Give them mercy that they may judge mercifully. Let them judge this nation as Thou wilt judge Thy people. Let them remember that he who takes the name of justice for his own profit or hatred or revenge is worse than the vulture that watches for the carcase. Let them not forget that howsoever high they stand or proudly they bear themselves, nothing shall they take from hence but the oak for their coffin. Let them be sure that when Thou shalt appear with a consuming fire before Thee and a tempest round about Thee, calling the heaven and the earth together, no portion can they have in that day like to the portion of thine inheritance."
The fierce prayer came to an end, and then the Judge, holding his sword erect, read his charge and repeated his oath, to deal justly between man and man, even as the sword stood upright before him. And the vast assembly of rude men in sheepskins and in homespun looked on and listened, all silent and solemn, all worshipful of law and reverent of its forms.
The oath being taken, the Judge had laid the sword aside and begun to promulgate the new laws, reading them clause by clause, first in Icelandic and then in Danish, when there was an uneasy movement at the outskirts of the crowd to the west of the Mount.
"The Governor," whispered one. "It's himself," muttered another. "He's here at last," murmured a third, and dark were the faces turned round to see. It was the Governor, indeed, and he pushed his way through the closely-packed people, who saw him coming, but stood together like a wall until riven apart by his pony's feet. At the causeway he dismounted and stepped up to the top of the Mount. He looked old and feeble and torn by evil passions; his straight gray hair hung like a blasted sheaf on to his shoulders, his forehead was blistered with blue veins, his cheeks were guttered with wrinkles, his little eyes were cruel, his jaw was broad and heavy, and his mouth was hard and square.
The Judge made him no obeisance, but went on with hisreading. The Bishop seemed not to see him, but gazed steadfastly forward. The Thing-men gave no sign.
He stood a moment, and looked around, and the people below could see his wrath rising like a white hand across his haggard face. Then he interrupted and said, "Chief Justice, I have something to say."
All heard the words, and the Speaker stopped, and, amid the breathless silence of the people, he answered quietly, "There will be a time and a place for that, your Excellency."
"The time is now, and the place is here," cried Jorgen Jorgensen, in a tense voice, and quivering with anger. "Listen to me. The rebel and traitor who once usurped the government of this island has escaped."
"Escaped!" cried a hundred voices.
"Michael Sunlocks!" cried as many more.
And a wave of excitement passed over the vast assembly.
"Yes, Michael Sunlocks has escaped," cried Jorgen Jorgensen. "That scoundrel is at liberty. He is free to do his wicked work again. Men of Iceland, I call on you to help me. I call on you to help the Crown of Denmark. The traitor must be taken. I call on you to take him."
A deep murmur ran through the closely-pressed people.
"You've got your guards," shouted a voice from below. "Why do you come to us?"
"Because," cried Jorgen Jorgensen, "my guards are protecting Reykjavik, and because they might scour your island a hundred years and never find what they looked for."
"Thank God!" muttered another voice from below.
"But you know it, every fell and fiord," cried Jorgen Jorgensen, "and never a toad could skulk under a stone but you would root him out of it. Chief Justice," he added, sweeping about, "I have a request to make of you."
"What is it, your Excellency?" said the Judge.
"That you should adjourn this Althing so that every man here present may go out in search of the traitor."
Then a loud involuntary murmur of dissent rose from the people, and at the same moment the Judge said in bewilderment, "What can your Excellency mean?"
"I mean," cried Jorgen Jorgensen, "that if you adjourn this Althing for three days, the traitor will be taken. If not, he will be at liberty as many years. Will you do it?"
"Your Excellency," said the Judge, "Althing has lived nigh upon a thousand years, and every other year for that thousand years it has met on this ancient ground, but never once since it began has the thing you ask been done."
"Let it be done now," cried Jorgen Jorgensen. "Will you do it?"
"We will do our duty by your Excellency," said the Judge, "and we will expect your Excellency to do your duty by us."
"But this man is a traitor," cried Jorgen Jorgensen, "and it is your duty to help me to capture him. Will you do it?"
"And this day is ours by ancient right and custom," said the Judge, "and it is your duty to stand aside."
"I am here for the King of Denmark," cried Jorgen Jorgensen, "and I ask you to adjourn this Althing. Will you do it?"
"And we are here for the people of Iceland," said the Judge, "and we ask you to step back and let us go on."
Then Jorgen Jorgensen's anger knew no bounds.
"You are subjects of the King of Denmark," he cried.
"Before ever Denmark was, we were," answered the Judge, proudly.
"And in his name I demand that you adjourn. Will you do it now?" cried Jorgen Jorgensen, with a grin of triumph.
"No," cried the Judge, lifting an undaunted face to the face of Jorgen Jorgensen.
The people held their breath through this clash of words, but at the Judge's brave answer a murmur of approval passed over them. Jorgen Jorgensen heard it, and flinched, but turned back to the Judge and said,
"Take care. If you do not help me, you hinder me; if you are not with me, you are against me. Is that man a traitor? Answer me—yes or no."
But the Judge made no answer, and there was dead silence among the people, for they knew well in what way the cruel question tended.
"Answer me—yes or no," Jorgen Jorgensen cried again.
Then the Bishop broke silence and said,
"Whatever our hearts may be, your Excellency, our tongues must be silent."
At that, Jorgen Jorgensen faced about to the crowd.
"I put a price on his head," he cried. "Two thousandkroner to anyone who takes him, alive or dead. Who will earn it?"
"No Icelander earns money with blood," said the Bishop. "If this thing is our duty, we will do it without pay. If not, no bribe will tempt us."
"Ay, ay," shouted a hundred voices.
Jorgen Jorgensen flinched again, and his face whitened as he grew darker within.
"So, I see how it is," he said, looking steadfastly at the Bishop, the Judge, and the Thing-men. "You are aiding this traitor's escape. You are his allies, every man of you. And you are seducing and deceiving the people."
Then he faced about towards the crowd more and more, and cried in a loud voice:
"Men of Iceland, you know the man who has escaped. You know what he is, and where he came from; you know he is not one of yourselves, but a bastard Englishman. Then drive him back home. Listen to me. What price did I put on his head? Two thousand kroner! I will give ten thousand! Ten thousand kroner for the man who takes him alive, and twenty thousand kroner—do you hear me?—twenty thousand for the man who takes him dead."
"Silence!" cried the Bishop. "Who are you, sir, that you dare tempt men to murder?"
"Murder!" cried Jorgen Jorgensen. "See how simple are the wise? Men of Iceland, listen to me again. The traitor is an outlaw. You know what that means. His blood is on his own head. Any man may shoot him down. No man may be called to account for doing so. Do you hear me? It is the law of Iceland, the law of Denmark, the law of the world. He is an outlaw, and killing him is no murder. Follow him up! Twenty thousand kroner to the man who lays him at my feet."
He would have said more, for he was heaving with passion, and his white face had grown purple, but his tongue seemed suddenly paralyzed, and his wide eyes fixed themselves on something at the outskirts of the crowd. One thin and wrinkled hand he lifted up and pointed tremblingly over the heads of the people. "There!" he said in a smothered cry, and after that he was silent.
The crowd shifted and looked round, amid a deep murmur of surprise and expectation. Then by one of the involuntary impulses that move great assemblies, the solid wall of human beings seemed to part of itself, and make a way for someone.
It was Red Jason, carrying Michael Sunlocks across his breast and shoulder. His bronzed cheeks were worn, his sunken eyes burned with a dull fire. He strode on, erect and strong, through the riven way of men and women. A breathless silence seemed to follow him. When he came to the foot of the Mount, he stopped, and let Sunlocks drop gently to the ground. Sunlocks was insensible, and his piteous white face looked up at the heavy dome of the sky. A sensation of awe held the vast crowd spellbound. It was as if the Almighty God had heard the blasphemy of that miserable old man, and given him on the instant his impious wish.
Then, in that breathless silence, Jason stood erect and said, in a firm, clear, sonorous voice, "You know who I am. Some of you hate me. Some of you fear me. All of you think me a sort of wild beast among men. That is why you caged me. But I have broken my bars, and brought this man along with me."
The men on the Mount had not time to breathe under the light and fire that flashed upon them when Jason lifted his clenched hand and said, "O, you that dwell in peace; you that go to your beds at night; you that eat when you are hungry and drink when you are athirst, and rest when you are weary: would to God you could know by bitter proof what this poor man has suffered. ButIknow it, and I can tell you what it has been. Where is your Michael Sunlocks, that I may tell it to him? Which is he? Point him out to me."
Then the people drew a deep breath, for they saw in an instant what had befallen these two men in the dread shaping of their fate.
"Where is he?" cried Jason, again.
And in a voice quivering with emotion, the Judge said:
"Don't you know the man you've brought here?"
"No—yes—yes," cried Jason. "My brother—my brother in suffering—my brother in misery—that's all I know or care. But where is your Michael Sunlocks? I have something to say to him. Where is he?"
Jorgen Jorgensen had recovered himself by this time, and pressing forward, he said with a cruel smile,
"You fool; shall I tell you where he is?"
"Heaven forbid it!" said the Bishop, stepping out and lifting both hands before the Governor's face. But in that instant Jason had recognized Jorgen Jorgensen.
"I know this old man," he said. "What is he doing here? Ah, God pity me, I had forgotten. I saw him at the mines. Then he is back. And, now I remember, he is Governor again."
Saying this, an agony of bewilderment quivered in his face. He looked around.
"Then where is Michael Sunlocks?" he cried in a loud voice. "Where is he? Which is he? Who is he? Will no one tell me? Speak! For the merciful Christ's sake let some one speak."
There was a moment of silence, in which the vast crowd trembled as one man with wonder and dismay. The Bishop and Judge stood motionless. Jorgen Jorgensen smiled bitterly and shook his head, and Jason raised his right hand to cover his face from the face of the insensible man at his feet, as if some dark foreshadowing of the truth had swept over him in an instant.
What happened thereafter Jason never knew, only that there was a shrill cry and a rustle like a swirl of wind, only that someone was coming up behind him through the walls of human beings, that still stood apart like riven rocks, only that in a moment a woman had flung herself over the prostrate body of his comrade, embracing it, raising it in her arms, kissing its pale cheeks, and sobbing over it, "My husband! my husband."
It was Greeba. When the dark mist had cleared away from before his eyes, Jason saw her and knew her. At the same instant he saw and knew his destiny, that his yoke-fellow had been Michael Sunlocks, that his lifelong enemy had been his life's sole friend.
It was a terrible discovery, and Jason reeled under the shock of it like a beast that is smitten to its death. And while he stood there, half-blind, half-deaf, swaying to and fro as if the earth rocked beneath him, across his shoulders, over his cheeks and his mouth and his eyes fell the lash of the tongue of Jorgen Jorgensen.
"Yes, fool that you are and have been," he cried in his husky voice, "that's where your Michael Sunlocks is."
"Shame! Shame!" cried the people.
But Jorgen Jorgensen showed no pity or ruth.
"You have brought him here to your confusion," he criedagain, "and it's not the first time you've taken this part to your own loss."
More he would have said in the merciless cruelty of his heart, only that a deep growl came up from the crowd and silenced him.
But Jason heard nothing, saw nothing, felt nothing, knew nothing, save that Michael Sunlocks lay at his feet, that Greeba knelt beside him, and that she was coaxing him, caressing him, and kissing him back to life.
"Michael," she whispered, "Michael! My poor Michael!" she murmured, while she moistened his lips and parched tongue with the brenni-vin from the horn of some good man standing near.
Jason saw this and heard this, though he had eyes and ears for nothing besides. And thinking, in the wild tumult of his distempered brain, that such tenderness might have been his, should have been his, must have been his, but for this man who had robbed him of this woman, all the bitterness of his poisoned heart rose up to choke him.
He remembered his weary life with this man, his sufferings with him, his love for him, and he hated himself for it all. What devil of hell had made sport of him, to give him his enemy for his friend? How Satan himself must shriek aloud to see it, that he who had been thrice robbed by this man—robbed of a father, robbed of a mother, robbed of a wife—should in his blindness tend him, and nurse him, and carry him with sweat of blood over trackless wastes that he might save him alive for her who waited to claim him!
Then he remembered what he had come for, and that all was not yet done. Should he do it after all? Should he give this man back to this woman? Should he renounce his love and his hate together—his love of this woman, his hate of this man? Love? Hate? Which was love? Which was hate? Ah, God! They were one; they were the same. Heaven pity him, what was he to do?
Thus the powers of good and the powers of evil wrestled together in Jason's heart for mastery. But the moment of their struggle was short. One look at the piteous blind face lying on Greeba's bosom, one glance at the more piteous wet face that hung over it, and love had conquered hate in that big heart forever and forever.
Jason was recalled to himself by a dull hum of words that seemed to be spoken from the Mount. Someone was asking why he had come there, and brought Michael Sunlocksalong with him. So he lifted his hand, partly to call attention, partly to steady himself, and in a broken voice he said these words:—
"Men and women, if you could only know what it means that you have just witnessed, I think it would be enough to move any man. You know what I am—a sort of bastard who has never been a man among men, but has walked alone all the days of his life. My father killed my mother, and so I vowed to kill my father. I did not do it, for I saved him out of the sea, and he died in my arms, as you might say, doating on the memory of another son. That son's mother had supplanted my mother and that son himself had supplanted me, so I vowed to kill him for his father's sake. I did not do that neither. I had never once set eyes on my enemy, I had done nothing but say what I meant to do, when you took me and tried me and condemned me. Perhaps that was injustice, such as could have been met with nowhere save here in Iceland, yet I thank God for it now. By what chance I do not know, but in that hell to which you sent me, where all names are lost and no man may know his yoke-fellow, except by his face if he has seen it, I met with one who became my friend, my brother, my second self. I loved him, as one might love a little child. And he loved me—yes, me,—I could swear it. You had thought me a beast, and shut me out from the light of day and the company of Christian men. But he made me a man, and lit up the darkness of my night."
His deep strong voice faltered, and he stopped, and nothing was audible save the excited breathing of the people. Greeba was looking up into his haggard face with amazement written upon her own.
"Must I go on," he cried, in a voice rent with agony. "I have brought him here, and he is Michael Sunlocks. My brother in suffering is my brother in blood. The man I have vowed to slay is the man I have tried to save."
Some of the people could not restrain their tears, and the white faces of the others quivered visibly.
"Why have you brought him here?" asked the Judge.
At that moment Michael Sunlocks began to move and to moan, as if consciousness were coming back to him. Jorgen Jorgensen saw this, and the proud composure with which he had looked on and listened while Sunlocks lay like a man dead left him in an instant.
"Why have you brought Michael Sunlocks here?" said the Judge again.
"Why has he brought him here?" said Jorgen Jorgensen bitterly. "To be arrested. That's why he has brought him here. See, the man is coming to. He will do more mischief yet, unless he is prevented. Take him," he shouted to two of the guards from Krisuvik, who had come with Greeba, and now stood behind her.
"Wait!" cried the Judge, lifting his hand.
There was no gainsaying his voice, and the guards who had stepped forward dropped back.
Then he turned to Jason again and repeated his question, "Why have you brought Michael Sunlocks here?"
At that, Jorgen Jorgensen lost all self-control and shouted, "Take him, I say!" And facing about to the Judge he said, "I will have you know, sir, that I am here for Denmark and must be obeyed."
The guards stepped forward again, but the crowd closed around them and pushed them back.
Seeing this, Jorgen Jorgensen grew purple with rage, and turning to the people, he shouted at the full pitch of his voice, "Listen to me. Some minutes past, I put a price on that man's head. I said I would give you twenty thousand kroner. I was wrong. I will give you nothing but your lives and liberty. You know what that means. You have bent your necks under the yoke already, and you may have to do it again. Arrest that man—arrest both men!"
"Stop!" cried the Judge.
"Those men are escaped prisoners," said Jorgen Jorgensen.
"And this is the Mount of Laws, and here is Althing," said the Judge; "and prisoners or no prisoners, if they have anything to say, by the ancient law of Iceland they may say it now."
"Pshaw! your law of Iceland is nothing to me," said Jorgen Jorgensen, and turning to the crowd he cried, "In the name of the King of Denmark I command you to arrest those men."
"And in the name of the King of Kings," said the Judge, turning after him, "I command you to let them alone."
There was a dead hush for a moment, and then the Judge looked down at Jason and said once more, "Why have you brought Michael Sunlocks here! Speak!"
But before Jason could make answer, Jorgen Jorgensen had broken in again:
"My guards are at Reykjavik," he cried, "and I am here alone. You are traitors, all of you, and if there is no one else to arrest that enemy of my country, I will do it myself. He shall go no further. Step back from him."
So saying, he opened his cloak, drew a pistol from his belt and cocked it. A shrill cry arouse from the crowd. The men on the Mount stood quaking with fear, and Greeba flung herself over the restless body of Michael Sunlocks.
But Jason did not move a feature.
"Old man," he said, looking up with eyes as steadfast as the sun into Jorgensen's face, and pointing towards Sunlocks, "if you touch one hair of this head, these hands will tear you to pieces."
Then one of the men who had stood near, a rough fellow with a big tear-drop rolling down his tanned cheeks, stepped up to Jason's side, and without speaking a word offered him his musket; but Jason calmly pushed it back. There was dead silence once more. Jorgen Jorgensen's uplifted hand fell to his side, and he was speechless.
"Speak now," said the Judge. "Why have you brought Michael Sunlocks here?"
Jason stood silent for a moment as if to brace himself up, and then he said, "I have laid my soul bare to your gaze already, and you know what I am and where I come from."
A low moan seemed to echo him.
"But I, too, am an Icelander, and this is our ancient Mount of Laws, the sacred ground of our fathers and our fathers' fathers for a thousand years."
A deep murmur rose from the vast company.
"And I have heard that if any one is wronged and oppressed and unjustly punished, let him but find his way to this place, and though he be the meanest slave that wipes his forehead, yet he will be a man among you all."
There were loud cries of assent.
"I have also heard that this Mount, on this day, is as the gate of the city in old time, when the judges sat to judge the people; and that he who is permitted to set foot on it, and cross it, though he were as guilty as the outlaws that hide in the desert, is innocent and free forever after. Answer me—is it true? Yes or no?"
"Yes! yes!" came from a thousand throats.
"Then, judges of Iceland, fellow-men and brothers, doyou ask why I have brought this man to this place? Look at this bleeding hand." He lifted the right hand of Sunlocks. "It has been pierced with a nail." A deep groan came from the people. He let the hand fall back. "Look at these poor eyes. They are blind. Do you know what that means? It means hellish barbarity and damned tyranny."
His voice swelled until it seemed to shake the very ground on which he stood. "What this man's crime may be I do not know, and I do not care. Let it be what it will, let the man be what he may—a felon like myself, a malefactor, a miscreant, a monster—yet what crime and what condition deserves punishment that is worse than death and hell?"
"None, none," shouted a thousand voices.
"Then, judges of Iceland, fellow-men and brothers, I call on you to save this man from that doom. Save him for his sake—save him for your own, for He that dwells above is looking down on you."
He paused a moment and then cried, "Listen!"
There was a low rumble as of thunder. It came not from the clouds, but from the bowels of the earth. The people turned pallid with dismay, but Jason's face was lit up with a wild frenzy.
"Do you hear it? It is the voice that was heard when these old hills were formed, and the valleys ran like fire. It is the voice of the Almighty God calling on you."
The word was like a war cry. The people answered it with a shout. And still Jason's voice pealed over their heads.
"Vengeance is God's but mercy belongs to man."
He stooped to Michael Sunlocks, where Greeba held him at her bosom, picked him up in his arms as if he had been a child, turned his face towards the Mount and cried, "Let me pass."
Then at one impulse, in one instant, the Judge and the Bishop parted and made a way, and Jason, carrying Sunlocks, strode up the causeway and swept through.
There was but one voice then in all that great assembly, and it was a mighty shout that seemed to rend the dome of the heavy sky. "Free! Free! Free!"
But the end was not yet. More, and more terrible, is to follow, though the spirit is not fain to tell of it, and thehand that sets it down is trembling. Let him who thinks that this world of time is founded in justice, wait long and watch patiently, for up to the eleventh hour he may see the good man sit in misery, and the evil man carried in honor. And let him who thinks that Nature is sweet and benignant and that she leaps to the aid of the just, learn from what is to come that she is all things to all men and nothing to any man.
Now when Jason had crossed the Mount of Laws with Sunlocks, thinking that by virtue of old custom he had thereby set him free of tyranny, Jorgen Jorgensen did what a man of shallow soul must always do when he sees the outward signs of the holy things that move the deeper souls of other men. He smiled with bitterness and laughed with contempt.
"A pretty thing, truly," he sneered, "out of some forgotten age of musty laws and old barbarians. But there is something else that is forgotten. It is forgotten that between these two men, Jason and Michael Sunlocks, there is this difference, that the one is a prisoner of Iceland, and the other of Denmark. Jason is a prisoner of Iceland, a felon of Iceland, therefore Iceland may pardon him, and if this brave mummery has made him free, then so be it, and God pity you! But Michael Sunlocks is a prisoner of Denmark, a traitor against the crown of Denmark, therefore Denmark alone may pardon him—and he is still unpardoned."
The clamorous crowd that had gathered about Michael Sunlocks looked up in silence and bewilderment at this fresh blow. And Jorgen Jorgensen saw his advantage and went on.
"Ask your Lagmann and let him answer you. Is it as I say or is it not? Ask him."
The people looked from face to face of the men on the Mount, from Jorgen Jorgensen to the Judge and from the Judge to the Bishop.
"Is this true?" shouted a voice from the crowd.
But the Judge made no answer, and the Bishop said, "Why all this wrangling over the body of a dying man?"
"Dying indeed!" said Jorgen Jorgensen, and he laughed. "Look at him." Michael Sunlocks, again lying in the arms of Greeba, was showing signs of life. "He will recover fast enough when all is over."
"Is it true?" shouted the same voice from the crowd.
"Yes," said the Judge.
Then the look of bewilderment in the faces of the people deepened to consternation. At that moment Michael Sunlocks was raised to his feet. And Jorgen Jorgensen, standing like an old snuffy tiger on the watch, laughed again, and turning to Jason he pointed at Sunlocks and said, "What did I say? A pretty farce truly, this pretence at unconsciousness. Small good it has done him. And he has little to thank you for. You have brought him here to his death."
What answer Jason would have made him, no man may say, for at that moment the same terrestrial thunder that had been heard before was heard again, and the earth became violently agitated as with a deep pulsation. The people looked into each other's faces with dismay, and scarcely had they realized the horror that waited to pour itself out on the world, when a man came galloping from the south and crying, "The mountains are coming down at Skaptar. Fly! fly!"
They stopped the man and questioned him, and he answered, with terror in his eyes, that the ice-mountain itself was sweeping down into the plain. Then he put his heels to his horse and broke away.
Hardly had the people heard this dread word when another man came galloping from the southwest, and crying, "The sea is throwing up new islands at Reykianess, and all the rivers are dry."
They stopped this man also, and questioned him, and he answered that the sky at the coast was raining red-hot stones, so that the sea hissed with them, and all the land was afire. Then he, too, put his heels to his horse and broke away.
Scarcely had he gone, when a third man came galloping from the southeast, and crying, "The land around Hekla is washed away, and not a green place is left on the face of the earth."
This man also they stopped and questioned, and he answered that a torrent of boiling water was rolling down from the Kotlugiayakul, hurling ice-blocks before it, and sweeping farms, churches, cattle, horses, and men, women, and children into the sea. Then this man also put his heels to his horse and broke away, like one pursued by death itself.
For some moments thereafter the people stood where the men had left them, silent, helpless, unable to think or feel.Then there rose from them all, as from one man, such a shriek of mortal agony as never before came from human breasts. In their terror they ran hither and thither, without thought or intention. They took to their tents, they took to their ponies, they galloped north, they galloped south, they galloped east, they galloped west, and then came scurrying back to the Mount from which they had started. A great danger was about to burst upon them, but they could not tell from what direction it would come. Some remembered their homes and the wives and children they had left there. Others thought only of themselves and of the fire and water that were dealing out death.
In two minutes the Mount was a barren waste, the fissures on its sides were empty, and the seats on the crags were bare. The Thing-men and the clergy were rushing to and fro in the throng, and the old Bishop and the Judge were seeking their horses.
Greeba stood, with fear on her face, by the side of Michael Sunlocks, who, blind and maimed, unable to see what was going on about him, not knowing yet where he was and what new evil threatened him, looked like a man who might have been dead and was awakening to consciousness in a world of the damned.
Two men, and two only, of all that vast multitude, kept their heads and were cool through this mad panic. One of these was Jorgen Jorgensen; the other was Red Jason. They watched each other constantly, the one with the eyes of the lynx, the other with the eyes of a lion.
A troop of men came riding through the throng from the direction of the Chasm of Ravens. Twenty of them were the bodyguard of the Governor, and they pushed their way to the feet of Jorgen Jorgensen.
"Your Excellency," said one of them, "we had news of you that you would want us; so we made bold to come."
"You have come in time," said Jorgen Jorgensen, and his cruel eyes flashed with the light of triumph.
"There has been a great eruption of Skaptar," said the man, "and the people of the south are flocking into Reykjavik."
"Leave old Skaptar to take care of itself," said Jorgen Jorgensen, "and do you take charge of that man there, and the woman beside him."
So saying, he pointed towards Michael Sunlocks, who,amid the whirl of the crowd around, had stood still in his helpless blindness.
Jason saw and heard all, and he shouted to the people to come to his help, for he was one man against twenty. But the people paid no heed to his calling, for every man was thinking of himself. Then Jason fell on the guards with his bare hands only. And his mighty muscles would have made havoc of many of them, but that Jorgen Jorgensen drew his pistol again and fired at him, and wounded him. Jason knew nothing of his injury until his right arm fell to his side, bleeding and useless. After that, he was seized from behind and from before, and held to the ground while Michael Sunlocks and Greeba were hurried away.
Then the air began to be filled with smoke, a wind that was like a solid wall of black sand swept up from the south, and sudden darkness covered everything.
"It is the lava!" shouted one.
"It's the fiery flood!" shouted another.
"It's the end of the world!" shouted a third.
And at one impulse the people rushed hither, thither—north, south, east, west—some weeping, some shrieking, some swearing, some laughing like demons—all wild with frenzy and mad with terror.
Jorgen Jorgensen found his little piebald pony where he had left it, for the docile beast, with the reins over its head, was munching the grass at the foot of the causeway. He mounted, and rode past Jason as the men were loosening their hold of him, and peering into his face he said with a sneer, "If this is the end of the world, as they say, make the best of what is left of it, and fly."
With that, he thrust spurs into his horse's sides, and went off at utmost speed.
Then Jason was alone on the plain. Not another human soul was left. The crowd was gone; the Mount of Laws was silent, and a flock of young sheep ran past it bleating. Over the mountains to the south a red glow burned along the black sky, and lurid flames shot through it.
Such was the beginning of the eruption of Skaptar. And Jason staggered along in the day-darkness, alone, abandoned, shouting like a maniac, swearing like a man accursed, crying out to the desolate waste and the black wind sweeping over it, that if this were the end of the world, he had a question to ask of Him who made it: Why He had broken His word, which said that the wages of sin wasdeath—why the avenger that was promised had not come to smite down the wicked and save the just?
In this valley of the Loberg there is a long peninsula of rock stretching between the western bank of the lake and the river called the Oxara. It begins in a narrow neck where is a pass for one horse only, and ends in a deep pool over a jagged precipice, with a mighty gorge of water falling from the opposite ravine. It is said that this awful place was used in ancient days for the execution of women who had killed their children, and of men who had robbed the widow and the orphan.
Near the narrowest part of the peninsula a man was plunging along in thedarkness, trusting solely to the sight of his pony, for his own eyes could see nothing. Two long hours he had been groping his way from the Mount of Laws, and he was still within one short mile of it. But at last he saw help at hand in his extremity, for a man on foot approached him out of the gloom. He took him for a farmer of those parts, and hailed him with hearty cheer.
"Good man," he said, "put me on the right path for Reykjavik, and you shall have five kroner, and welcome."
But scarcely had he spoken when he recognized the man he had met, and the man recognized him. The one was Jason, and the other Jorgen Jorgensen.
Jorgen Jorgensen thought his hour had come, for, putting his hand to his weapon, he remembered that he had not reloaded it since he had shot at Jason, and so he flung it away. But the old tiger was not to be subdued. "Come," he said, out of the black depths of his heart, "let us have done. What is it to be?"
Then Jason stepped back, and said, "That is the way to Reykjavik—over the stream and through the first chasm on the left."
At this, Jorgen Jorgensen seemed to catch his breath. He tried to speak and could not.
"No," said Jason. "It may be weakness, it may be folly, it may be madness, but you were my mother's father, God pity her and forgive you, and not even at the price of my brother's life will I have your blood on my hands. Go!"
Jorgen Jorgensen touched his horse and rode on, withhis gray, dishonored head deep in his breast. And, evil man as he was, surely his cold heart was smitten with shame.
No Althing was held in Iceland in that year of the great eruption of Skaptar. The dread visitation lasted six long months, from the end of June to the beginning of January of the year following. During that time the people of the South and Southeast, who had been made homeless and penniless, were constantly trooping into Reykjavik in hundreds and tens of hundreds. The population of the capital rose from less than two thousand to more than twenty thousand. Where so many were housed no man ever knew, and how they lived none can say. Every hut, every hovel, every hole was full of human beings. Men, women, and children crawled like vermin in every quarter. For food, they had what fish came out of the sea, and when the frost covered the fiord a foot deep with ice, they starved on fish bones and and moss and seaweed.
By this time a cry for help had gone up throughout Europe, and Denmark and England had each sent a shipload of provisions, corn and meal and potatoes. The relief came late, the ships were caught in the ice, and held ice-bound a long month off Reykianess, and when at length the food for which the people famished was brought into Reykjavik harbor, the potatoes were like slabs of leather and the corn and meal like blocks of stone.
But even in this land of fire and frost, the Universal Mother is good to her children, and the people lived through their distresses. By the end of February they were trooping back to the scenes of their former homes, for, desolate as those places were, they loved them and clung to them still.
In the days of this awful calamity there were few that remembered Michael Sunlocks. Jorgen Jorgensen might have had his will of him then, and scarce anybody the wiser. That he held his hand was due first to fear and then to contempt; fear of Copenhagen, contempt of the man who hadlost his influence over the people of Iceland. He was wrong on both counts. Copenhagen cared nothing for the life of Michael Sunlocks, and laughed at the revolution whereof he had been the head and centre. But when thepeopleof Iceland recovered from the deadly visitation, their hearts turned back to the man who had suffered for their sakes.
Then it appeared that through these weary months Michael Sunlocks had been lying in the little house of detention at Reykjavik, with no man save one man, and that was old Adam Fairbrother, to raise a voice on his behalf, and no woman save one woman, and that was Greeba, to cling to him in his extremity. Neither of these had been allowed to come near to him, but both had been with him always. Again and again old Adam had forced his way to the Governor, and protested that Michael Sunlocks was not being treated as a prisoner, but as a condemned criminal and galley-slave; and again and again Greeba had come and gone between her lodgings at the house of the Bishop and her heart's home at the prison, with food and drink for him who lay in darkness and solitude. Little he knew to whom he was thus beholden, for she took pains to keep her secret, but all Reykjavik saw what she was doing. And the heart of Reykjavik was touched when she brought her child from Krisuvik, thinking no shame of her altered state, content to exist in simple poverty where she had once lived in wealth, if so be that she might but touch the walls that contained her husband.
Seeing how the sympathy was going, Jorgen Jorgensen set himself to consider what step to take, and finally concluded to remove Michael Sunlocks as far as possible from the place where his power was still great, and his temptation to use it was powerful. The remotest spot under his rule was Grimsey, an island lying on the Arctic circle, thirty-five miles from the mainland. It was small, it was sparsely populated, its inhabitants were fishermen with no craft but open row boats; it had no trade; no vessels touched at it, and the sea that separated it from Iceland was frozen during many months of the year. And to this island Jorgensen decided that Michael Sunlocks should go.
When the word was brought to Michael Sunlocks, he asked what he was expected to do on that little rock at the end of the world, and said that Grimsey would be his sentence of Jorgen death.
"I prefer to die, for I have no great reason to wish for life," he said; "but if I must live, let me live here. I am blind, I do not know the darkness of this place, and all I ask of you is air and water."
Old Adam, too, protested loudly, whereupon Jorgen Jorgensen answered with a smile that he had supposed that all he intended to do was for the benefit of the prisoner himself, who would surely prefer a whole island to live upon to being confined in a cell at Reykjavik.
"He will there have liberty to move about," said Jorgen, "and he will live under the protection of the Danish laws."
"Then that will be more than he has done here," said Adam, boldly, "where he has existed at the caprice of a Danish tyrant."
The people of Reykjavik heard of the banishment with surprise and anger, but nothing availed to prevent it. When the appointed day came, Michael Sunlocks was marched out of his prison and taken off towards the Bursting-sand desert between a line of guards. There was a great throng to bid adieu to him, and to groan at the power that sent him. His face was pale, but his bodily strength was good. His step was firm and steady, and gave hardly a hint of his blindness. His farewell of those who crowded upon him was simple and manly.
"Good-bye," he said, "and though with my eyes I cannot see you, I can see you with my heart, and that is the better sight whereof death alone can rob me. No doubt you have much to forgive to me; so forgive it to me now, for we shall meet no more."
There was many a sob at that word, but the two who would have been most touched by it were not there to hear it, for Greeba and old Adam were busy with their own enterprise, as we shall learn hereafter.
When Michael Sunlocks was landed at Grimsey, he was offered first as bondman for life, or prisoner-slave to the largest bonder there, a grasping old miser named Jonsson, who, like Jorgen himself, had never allowed his bad conscience to get the better of him. But Jonsson looked at Sunlocks with a curl of the lip and said, "What's the use of a blind man?" So the end of all was thatSunlockswas put in charge of the priest of the island. The priest was to take him into his house, to feed, clothe and attend to him, and report his condition twice a year to the Governor at Reykjavik.For such service to the State, the good man was to receive an annual stipend of one hundred kroner. And all arrangements being made, the escort that had brought Michael Sunlocks the ten days' journey over the desert, set their faces back towards the capital.
Michael Sunlocks was then on the edge of the habitable world. There was no attempt to confine him, for his home was an island bound by a rocky coast; he was blind and, therefore, helpless; and he could not step out a thousand yards alone without the danger of walking over a precipice into the sea. So that with all his brave show of liberty, he was as much in fetters as if his feet had been enchained to the earth beneath them.
The priest, who was in truth his jailer, was one who has already been heard of in this history, being no other than the Sigfus Thomsson (titled Sir from his cure of souls) who was banished from his chaplaincy at Reykjavik six and twenty years before for marrying Stephen Orry to Rachael, the daughter of the Governor-General Jorgensen. He had been young then, and since his life had been cut in twain he had fallen into some excesses. Thus it had often happened that when his people came to church over miles of their trackless country he had been too drunk to go through with it, and sometimes when they wished to make sure of him for a wedding or a christening, they had been compelled to decoy him into his house over night and lock him up until morning. Now he was elderly and lived alone, save for a fractious old man-servant, in a straggling old moss-covered house, or group of houses. He was weak of will, timid as a deer, and infirm of purpose, yet he was beloved by all men and pitied by all women for his sweet simplicity, whereof anyone might take advantage, and for the tenderness that could never resist a story of distress.
The coming of Michael Sunlocks startled him out of his tipsy sleep of a quarter of a century, and his whole household was put into a wild turmoil. In the midst of it, when he was at his wit's end to know what to do for his prisoner-guest, a woman, a stranger to Grimsey, carrying a child in her arms, presented herself at his door. She was young and comely, poorly but not meanly clad, and she offered herself to the priest as his servant. Her story was simple, touching, and plausible. She had lately lost her husband, an Icelander, though she herself was a foreigner, as her speech might tell. And hearing at Husavik that the priestof Grimsey was a lone old gentleman without kith or kin or belongings, she had bethought herself to come and say that she would be glad to take service from him for the sake of the home he might offer her.
It was Greeba, and simple old Sir Sigfus fell an easy prey to her woman's wit. He wiped his rheumy eyes while she told her story, and straightway sent her into the kitchen. Only one condition he made with her, and that was that she was to bear herself in his house as Iceland women bear themselves in the houses of Iceland masters. No more than that and no less. She was to keep to her own apartments and never allow herself to be seen or heard by a guest that was henceforth to live with him. That good man was blind, and would trouble her but little, for he had seen sorrow, poor soul, and was very silent.
Greeba consented to this with all earnestness, for it fell straight in the way of her own designs. But with a true woman's innocent duplicity she showed modesty and said "He shall never know that I'm in your house, sir, unless you tell him so yourself."
Thus did Greeba place herself under the same roof with Michael Sunlocks, and baffle discovery by the cunning of love. Two purposes were to be served by her artifice. First she was to be constantly by the side of her husband, to nurse him and tend him, to succor him, and to watch over him. Next, she was to be near him for her own sake, and for love's sake, to win him back to her some day by means more dear than those that had won him for her at the first. She had decided not to reveal herself to him in the meantime, for he had lost faith in her affection. He had charged her with marrying him for pride's sake, but he should see that she had married him for himself alone. The heart of his love was dead, but day by day, unknown, unseen, unheard, she would breathe upon it, until the fire in its ashes lived again. Such was the design with which Greeba took the place of a menial in the house where her husband lived as a prisoner, and little did she count the cost of it.
Six months passed, and she kept her promise to the priest to live as an Iceland servant in the house of an Iceland master. She was never seen, and never heard, and what personal service was called for was done by the snappish old man-servant. But she filled the old house, once so muggy and dark, with all the cheer and comfort of life.She knew that Michael Sunlocks felt the change, for one day she heard him say to the priest, as he lifted his blind face and seemed to look around, "One would think that this place must be full of sunshine."
"Why, and so it is," said the priest, "and that's my good housekeeper's doing."
"I have heard her step," said Michael Sunlocks. "Who is she?"
"A poor young woman that has lately lost her husband," said the priest.
"Young, you say?" said Sunlocks.
"Why, yes, young as I go," said the priest.
"Poor soul!" said Sunlocks.
It cost Greeba many a pang not to fling herself at her husband's feet at hearing that word so sadly spoken. But she remembered her promise and was silent. Not long afterwards she heard Michael Sunlocks ask the priest if he had never thought of marriage. And the priest answered yes, that he was to have married at Reykjavik about the time he was sent to Grimsey, but the lady had looked shy at his banishment and declined to share it.
"So I have never looked at a woman again," said the priest.
"And I daresay you have your tender thoughts of her, though so badly treated," said Sunlocks.
"Well, yes," said the priest, "yes."
"You were chaplain at Reykjavik, but looking to be priest or dean, and perhaps bishop some day?" said Sunlocks.
"Well, maybe so; such dreams come in one's youth," said the priest.
"And when you were sent to Grimsey there was nothing before you but a cure of less than a hundred souls?" said Sunlocks.
"That is so," said the priest.
"The old story," said Sunlocks, and he drew a deep breath.
But deeper far was the breath that Greeba drew, for it seemed to be the last gasp of her heart.
A year passed, and never once had Greeba spoken that her husband might hear her. But if she did not speak, she listened always, and the silence of her tongue seemed to make her ears the more keen. Thus she found a way to meet all his wishes, and before he had asked he was answered.If the day was cold he found gloves to his hand; if he thought to wash there was water beside him; if he wished to write the pen lay near his fingers. Meantime he never heard more than a light footfall and the rustle of a dress about him, but as these sounds awoke painful memories he listened and said nothing.
The summer had come and gone in which he could walk out by the priest's arm, or lie by the hour within sound of a stream, and the winter had fallen in with its short days and long nights. And once, when the snow lay thick on the ground, Greeba heard him say how cheerfully he might cheat time of many a weary hour of days like that if only he had a fiddle to beguile them. At that she remembered that it was not want of money that had placed her where she was, and before the spring of that year a little church organ came from Reykjavik, addressed to the priest, as a present from someone whose name was unknown to him.
"Some guardian angel seems to hover around us," said Michael Sunlocks, "to give us everything that we can wish for."
The joy in his blind face brought smiles into the face of Greeba, but her heart was heavy for all that. To live within hourly sight of love, yet never to share it, was to sit at a feast and eat nothing. To hear his voice, yet never to answer it, to see his face, yet never to touch it with the lips that hungered to kiss it, was an ordeal more terrible than any woman's heart could bear. Should she not speak? Might she not reveal herself? Not yet, not yet! But how long, oh, how long?
In the heat of her impatience she could not quite restrain herself, and though she dare not speak, she sang. It was on the Sunday after the organ came, when all the people at Grimsey were at church, in their strong odor of fish and sea fowl, to hear the strange new music. Michael Sunlocks played it, and when the people sang Greeba also joined them. Her voice was low at first, but she soon lost herself and then it rose above the other voices. Suddenly the organ stopped, and she was startled to see the blind face of her husband turning in her direction.
Later the same day she heard Sunlocks say to the priest, "Who was the lady who sang?"
"Why, that was my good housekeeper," said the priest.
"And did you say that she had lost her husband?" said Sunlocks.
"Yes, poor thing, and she is a foreigner, too," said the priest.
"Did you say a foreigner?" said Sunlocks.
"Yes, and she has a child left with her also," said the priest.
"A child?" said Sunlocks. And then after a pause he added, with more indifference, "Poor girl! poor girl!"
Hearing this, Greeba fluttered on the verge of discovering herself. "If only I could be sure," she thought, but she could not; and the more closely for the chance that had so nearly revealed her, she hid herself henceforward in the solitude of an Iceland servant.
Two years passed and then Greeba had to share her secret with another. That other was her own child. The little man was nearly three years old by this time, walking a little and talking a great deal, and not to be withheld by any care from going over every corner of the house. He found Michael Sunlocks sitting alone in his darkness, and the two struck up a fast friendship. They talked in baby fashion, and played on the floor for hours. With a wild thrill of the heart, Greeba saw those twain together, and it cost her all she had of patience and self-command not to break in upon them with a shower of rapturous kisses. But she held back her heart like a dog on the leash and listened, while her eyes rained tears and her lips smiled, to the words that passed between them.
"And what's your name, my sweet one?" said Sunlocks in English.
"Michael," lisped the little man.
"So? And an Englishman, too. That's brave."
"Ot's the name ofyour'ickle boy?"
"Ah, I've got none, sweetheart."
"Oh."
"But if I had one perhaps his name would be Michael also."
"Oh."
The little eyes looked up into the blind face, and the little lip began to fall. Then, by a sudden impulse, the little legs clambered up to the knee of Sunlocks, and the little head nestled close against his breast.
"I'llbe your 'ickle boy."
"So you shall, my sweet one, and you shall come again and sit with me, and sing to me, for I am very lonely sometimes, and your dear voice will cheer me."
But the little man had forgotten his trouble by this time, and scrambled back to the floor. There he sat on his haunches like a frog, and cried, "Look! look! look!" as he held up a white pebble in his dumpy hand.
"I cannot look, little one, for I am blind."
"Ot's blind?"
"Having eyes that cannot see, sweetheart."
"Oh."
"Butyoureyescansee, and if you are to bemylittle boy, my little Michael, your eyes shall see for my eyes also, and you shall come to me every day, and tell me when the sun is shining, and the sky is blue, and then we will go out together and listen for the birds that will be singing."
"Dat's nice," said the little fellow, looking down at the pebble in his palm, and just then the priest came into the house out of the snow.
"How comes it that this sweet little man and I have never met before?" said Sunlocks.
"You might live ten years in an Iceland house and never see the children of its servants," said the priest.
"I've heard his silvery voice, though," said Sunlocks. "What is the color of his eyes?"
"Blue," said the priest.
"Then his hair—this long curly hair—it must be of the color of the sun?" said Sunlocks.
"Flaxen," said the priest.
"Run along to your mother, sweetheart, run," said Sunlocks, and, dropping back in his seat, he murmured, "How easily he might have been my son indeed."
Kneeling on both knees, her hot face turned down and her parted lips quivering, Greeba had listened to all this with the old delicious trembling at both sides her heart. And going back to her own room, she caught sight of herself in the glass, and saw that her eyes were dancing like diamonds and all her cheeks a rosy red. Life, and a gleam of sunshine, seemed to have shot into her face in an instant, and while she looked there came over her a creeping thrill of delight, for she knew that she was beautiful. And becauseheloved beauty whose love was everything to her, she cried for joy, and picked up her boy, where he stood tugging at her gown, and kissed him rapturously.
The little man, with proper manly indifference to such endearments, wriggled back to the ground, and then Greeba remembered, with a flash that fell on her brain like a sword,that her husband was blind now, and all the beauty of the world was nothing to him. Smitten by this thought, she stood a moment, while the sunshine died out of her eyes and the rosy red out of her cheeks. But presently it came to her to ask herself if Sunlocks was blind forever, and if nothing could be done for him. This brought back, with pangs of remorse for such long forgetfulness, the memory of some man, an apothecary in Husavik, who had the credit of curing many of blindness after accidents in the northern mines where free men worked for wage. So, thinking of this apothecary throughout that day and the next, she found at last a crooked way to send money to him, out of the store that still remained to her, and to ask him to come to Grimsey.
But, waiting for the coming of the apothecary, a new dread, that was also a new hope, stole over her.
Since that first day on which her boy and her husband talked together, and every day thereafter when Sunlocks had called out "Little Michael! little Michael!" and she had sent the child in, with his little flaxen curls combed out, his little chubby face rubbed to a shiny red, and all his little body smelling sweet with the soft odors of childhood, she had noticed—she could not help it—that Sunlocks listened for the sound of her own footstep whenever by chance (which might have been rare) she passed his way.
And at first this was a cause of fear to her, lest he should discover her before her time came to reveal herself; and then of hope that he might even do so, and save her against her will from the sickening pains of hungry waiting; and finally of horror, that perhaps after all he was thinking of her as another woman. This last thought sent all the blood of her body tingling into her face, and on the day it flashed upon her, do what she would she could not but hate him for it as for an infidelity that might not be forgiven.
"He never speaks of me," she thought, "never thinks of me; I am dead to him; quite, quite dead and swept out of his mind."
It was a cruel conflict of love and hate, and if it had come to a man he would have said within himself, "By this token I know that she whom I love has forgotten me, and may be happy with another some day. Well, I am nothing—let me go my ways." But that is not the gospel of awoman's love, with all its sweet, delicious selfishness. So after Greeba had told herself once or twice that her husband had forgotten her, she told herself a score of times that do what he would he should yet be hers, hers only, and no other woman's in all the wide world. Then she thought, "How foolish! Who is there to take him from me? Why, no one."
About the same time she heard Sunlocks question the priest concerning her, asking what the mother of little Michael was like to look upon. And the priest answered that if the eyes of an old curmudgeon like himself could see straight, she was comely beyond her grade in life, and young, too, though her brown hair had sometimes a shade of gray, and gentle and silent, and of a soft and touching voice.
"I've heard her voice once," said Sunlocks. "And her husband was an Icelander, and he is dead, you say?"
"Yes," said the priest; "and she's like myself in one thing."
"And what is that?" said Sunlocks.
"That she has never been able to look at anybody else," said the priest. "And that's why she is here, you must know, burying herself alive on old Grimsey."
"Oh," said Sunlocks, in the low murmur of the blind, "if God had but given me this woman, so sweet, so true, so simple, instead of her—of her—and yet—and yet——"
"Gracious heavens!" thought Greeba, "he is falling in love with me."
At that, the hot flush overspread her cheeks again, and her dark eyes danced, and all her loveliness flowed back upon her in an instant. And then a subtle fancy, a daring scheme, a wild adventure broke on her heart and head, and made every nerve in her body quiver. She would let him go on; he should think she was the other woman; she would draw him on to love her, and one day when she held him fast and sure, and he was hers, hers, hers only forever and ever, she would open her arms and cry, "Sunlocks, Sunlocks, I am Greeba, Greeba!"
It was while she was in the first hot flush of this wild thought, never doubting but the frantic thing was possible, for love knows no impediments, that the apothecary came from Husavik, saying he was sent by some unknown correspondent named Adam Fairbrother, who had written from London. He examined the eyes of Michael Sunlocks by thedaylight first, but the season being the winter season, and the daylight heavy with fog from off the sea, he asked for a candle, and Greeba was called to hold it while he examined the eyes again. Never before had she been so near to her husband throughout the two years that she had lived under the same roof with him, and now that she stood face to face with him, within sound of his very breathing, with nothing between them but the thin gray film that lay over his dear eyes, she could not persuade herself but that he was looking at her and seeing her. Then she began to tremble, and presently a voice said,
"Steadily, young woman, steadily, or your candle may fall on the good master's face."
She tried to compose herself, but could not, and when she had recovered from her first foolish dread, there came a fear that was not foolish—a fear of the verdict of the apothecary. Waiting for this in those minutes that seemed to be hours, she knew that she was on the verge of betraying herself, and however she held her breath she could see that her bosom was heaving.
"Yes," said the apothecary, calmly, "yes, I see no reason why you should not recover your sight."
"Thank God!" said Michael Sunlocks.
"Thank God again," said the priest.
And Greeba, who had dropped the candle to the floor at length, had to run from the room on the instant, lest the cry of her heart should straightway be the cry of her lips as well, "Thank God, again and again, forever and forever."
And, being back in her own apartment, she plucked up her child into her arms, and cried over him, and laughed over him, and whispered strange words of delight into his ear, mad words of love, wild words of hope.
"Yes, yes," she whispered, "he will recover his sight, and see his little son, and know him for his own, his own, his own. Oh, yes, yes, yes, he will know him, he will know him, for he will see his own face, his own dear face, in little Michael's."
But next day, when the apothecary had gone, leaving lotions and drops for use throughout a month, and promising to return at the end of it, Greeba's new joy made way for a new terror, as she reflected that just as Sunlocks would see little Michael if he recovered his sight, so he would see herself. At that thought all her heart was inher mouth again, for she told herself that if Sunlocks saw her he would also see what deception she had practiced in that house, and would hate her for it, and tell her, as he had told her once before, that it came of the leaven of her old lightness that had led her on from false-dealing to false-dealing, and so he would turn his back upon her or drive her from him.
Then in the cruel war of her feelings she hardly knew whether to hope that Sunlocks should recover his sight, or remain as he was. Her pity cried out for the one, and her love for the other. If he recovered, at least there would be light for him in his dungeon, though she might not be near to share it. But if he remained as he was, she would be beside him always, his second sight, his silent guardian spirit, eating her heart out with hungry love, but content and thanking God.