CHAPTER VI.

THE GOSPEL OF LOVE.

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 had lost 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 the people of 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 that Sunlocks was 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 priest of 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 of _your_ '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'll_ be 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."

"But _your_ eyes _can_ see, and if you are to be _my_ little 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 because _he_ loved 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 a woman'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 the daylight 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 in her 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.

"Why couldn't I leave things as they were?" she asked herself, but she was startled out of the selfishness of her love by a great crisis that came soon afterwards.

Now Michael Sunlocks had been allowed but little intercourse with the world during the two and a half years of his imprisonment since the day of his recapture at the Mount of Laws. While in the prison at Reykjavik he had heard the pitiful story of that day; who his old yoke-fellow had been, what he had done and said, and how at last, when his brave scheme had tottered to ruin, he had gone out of the ken and knowledge of all men. Since Sunlocks came to Grimsey he had written once to Adam Fairbrother, asking tenderly after the old man's own condition, earnestly after Greeba's material welfare, and with deep affectionate solicitude for the last tidings of Jason. His letter never reached its destination, for the Governor of Iceland was the postmaster as well. And Adam on his part had written twice to Michael Sunlocks, once from Copenhagen where (when Greeba had left for Grimsey) he had gone by help of her money from Reykjavik, thinking to see the King of Denmark in his own person; and once from London, whereto he had followed on when that bold design had failed him. But Adam's letters shared the fate of the letter of Sunlocks, and thus through two long years no news of the world without had broken the silence of that lonely home on the rock of the Arctic seas.

But during that time there had been three unwritten communications from Jorgen Jorgensen. The first came after some six months in the shape of a Danish sloop of war, which took up its moorings in the roadstead outside; the second after a year, in the shape of a flagstaff and flag which were to be used twice a day for signalling to the ship that the prisoner was still in safe custody; the third after two years, in the shape of a huge lock and key, to be placed on some room in which the prisoner was henceforward to be confined. These three communications, marking in their contrary way the progress of old Adam's persistent suit, first in Denmark and then in England, were followed after a while by a fourth. This was a message from the Governor at Reykjavik to the old priest at Grimsey, that, as he valued his livelihood and life he was to keep close guard and watch over his prisoner, and, if need be, to warn him that a worse fate might come to him at any time.

Now, the evil hour when this final message came was just upon the good time when the apothecary from Husavik brought the joyful tidings that Sunlocks might recover his sight, and the blow was the heavier for the hope that had gone before it. All Grimsey shared both, for the fisherfolk had grown to like the pale stranger who, though so simple in speech and manner, had been a great man in some way that they scarcely knew--having no one to tell them, being so far out of the world--but had fallen upon humiliation and deep dishonor. Michael Sunlocks himself took the blow with composure, saying it was plainly his destiny and of a piece with the rest of his fate, wherein no good thing had ever come to him without an evil one coming on the back of it. The tender heart of the old priest was thrown into wild commotion, for Sunlocks had become, during the two years of their life together, as a son to him, a son that was as a father also, a stay and guardian, before whom his weakness--that of intemperance--stood rebuked.

But the trouble of old Sir Sigfus was as nothing to that of Greeba. In the message of the Governor she saw death, instant death, death without word or warning, and every hour of her life thereafter was beset with terrors. It was the month of February; and if the snow fell from the mossy eaves in heavy thuds, she thought it was the muffled tread of the guards who were to come for her husband; and if the ice-floes that swept down from Greenland cracked on the coast of Grimsey, she heard the shot that was to end his life. When Sunlocks talked of destiny she cried, and when the priest railed at Jorgen Jorgensen (having his own reason to hate him) she cursed the name of the tyrant. But all the while she had to cry without tears and curse only in the dark silence of her heart, though she was near to betraying herself a hundred times a day.

"Oh, it is cruel," she thought, "very, very cruel. Is this what I have waited for all this weary, weary time?"

And though so lately her love had fought with her pity to prove that it was best for both of them that Sunlocks should remain blind, she found it another disaster now, in the dear inconsistency of womanhood, that he should die on the eve of regaining his sight.

"He will never see his boy," she thought, "never, never, never now."

Yet she could hardly believe it true that the cruel chance could befall. What good would the death of Sunlocks do to anyone? What evil did it bring to any creature that he was alive on that rock at the farthest ends of the earth and sea? Blind, too, and helpless, degraded from his high place, his young life wrecked, and his noble gifts wasted! There must have been some mistake. She would go out to the ship and ask if it was not so.

And with such wild thoughts she hurried off to the little village at the edge of the bay. There she stood a long hour by the fisherman's jetty, looking wistfully out to where the sloop of war lay, like a big wooden tub, between gloomy sea and gloomy sky, and her spirit failed her, and though she had borrowed a boat she could go no further.

"They might laugh at me, and make a jest of me," she thought, "for I cannot tell them that I am his wife."

With that, she went her way back as she came, crying on the good powers above to tell her what to do next, and where to look for help. And entering in at the porch of her own apartments, which stood aside from the body of the house, she heard voices within, and stopped to listen. At first she thought they were the voices of her child and her husband; but though one of them was that of little Michael, the other was too deep, too strong, too sad for the voice of Sunlocks.

"And so your name is Michael, my brave boy. Michael! Michael!" said the voice, and it was strange and yet familiar. "And how like you are to your mother, too! How like! How very like!" And the voice seemed to break in the speaker's throat.

Greeba grew dizzy, and stumbled forward. And, as she entered the house, a man rose from the settle, put little Michael to the ground, and faced about to her. The man was Jason.