The Prodigal Son

Part VI

“One moment in annihilation’s waste
One moment of the Well of Life to taste,—
The stars are setting and the caravan
Draws to the Dawn of Nothing—Oh, make haste!”

I

The Danish mail-steamer “Laura,” outward bound on her midwinter trip from Copenhagen to Leith, and from Leith to Iceland, carried two saloon passengers only.

One of these, a comfortable, elderly person of ample proportions, dressed in the warmest Icelandic vadmal, was an Iceland merchant returning from Edinburgh with a hundred tons of British produce. This was Jon Oddsson, formerly radical champion in politics, and now conservative leader in trade.

The other passenger was a tall, spare man apparently about fifty years of age, with large and luminous but weary eyes, long pale cheeks deeply scored with lines of thought, and a pointed beard that was beginning to be tinged with grey. This was Christian Christiansson, now ten years older than when he returned from the Riviera to London, and so changed in every feature by the strange characters which work and sorrow inscribe on a man’s face with the stern hand of Time, that few or none would have recognized him.

In the interval Christian Christiansson had carried out his plans and realized his expectations. Buried in the depths of London as a man dying on shipboard is buried in the vast grave of the sea, he had lived long as one who was dead, but his hour had struck at last. For five years he had been one of the most popular of living composers. His operas, founded on the Sagas of his own country, had made Iceland familiar to people everywhere; his works had been represented in every capital; his tunes had been played in every street, and it was almost as if he had breathed over Europe and set the air to song.

Meantime he had been faithful to the pledge he had made with himself. His name was a household word, but it was no more than a name, and his identity had never been revealed. No temptation had prevailed with him to disclose it, and the few who knew his secret had found it to their interest to maintain the mystery. And now he was returning to his own country rich and famous—rich as the man who strikes ore from the rock and finds it pouring down on him in an avalanche of gold, but famous only as the “hidden folk” are famous, the good fairies who leave food and drink at the doors of poor men and then steal away before they awake in the dawn.

How changed the old world was when he emerged at length into the light of open day! The telegram he sent from London, asking for a berth to be reserved for him, had almost paralyzed the captain with excitement and delight. It was the same old Captain Zimsen, who in former days had given him the best room when he was in favor, and the worst when he was in disgrace. The moment he set foot on the ship, lying in dock at Leith, the time-serving old salt had been there—hat in hand—to lead him to his private cabin.

“Do me the honor to occupy my stateroom, sir, and if there is anything you could wish—any little dainty for the table——”

“You are very good, very obliging.”

“Don’t mention it, sir. It is a pleasure, a privilege, to do anything in my power for the most distinguished Icelander of modern times. Do they know you are coming, Mr. Christiansson?”

“Not yet, Captain.”

“What a pity! What a reception they would have given you! But they will, they will!”

If the world was changed, the man was changed also. The buoyancy of youth was gone, and over the old captivating gaiety of manner and expression, a sad gravity, had fallen, as if a lilac-tree, still bright with blossom, had been borne down by snow. But after two days at sea his spirits rose, and he felt like a slave who had been emancipated, like a prisoner set free.

It was fifteen years since he had left his own country, but he was returning to it at last, as he had always hoped and intended to do. He had left it in disgrace, he was going back to it in honor; he had left it in poverty, he was going back to it with wealth. He was going back as the prodigal, yet not, like the prodigal, empty-handed and ashamed, but able to make amends, and to wipe the tears from all eyes.

Would it be wrong to permit himself to be known? If the people of Iceland, more observant than this old captain, identified in Christian Christiansson the Oscar Stephenson who was thought to be dead, would it be false to the pledge he had made with himself to submit to their recognition? Fifteen years he had lived in obscurity—was it not enough for penance and pardon? Were not the doors of his dungeon even yet broken open? Could he not believe that he was delivered from the body of the death he had lived in? He had lived, he had died—might he not live again?

II

During the ten years in which he had been as a dead man all channels of communication had been closed to him, and except for information casually gathered, he had little or no knowledge of what had occurred in Iceland. And now, finding himself for the first time face to face with men who had been in constant touch with his people, he had a hundred questions which he yearned to ask: “Is my mother alive? Is she well? And my little daughter—has God been good to me and let her live, or is all my labor wasted?”

But he was afraid to learn the truth too suddenly, so he waited and watched and listened for answers to the questions he dared not ask. Meantime he tried to amuse himself with the curiosity of the captain and his fellow-passengers, who were clearly at a loss to know who he was, where he was born, and what family of the Christianssons he came from. It was a perilous pleasure, a dizzy joy, to listen to the names of his family and to hear himself discussed; and sometimes, in mortal shame of the subterfuges to which his disguise condemned him, he could hardly resist an impulse to blurt out the truth of his identity, and sometimes he had to leap up from his place in the smoking-room and fly.

“You’ve not been home very lately, Mr. Christiansson?” said the captain, who was smoking his long pipe after mid-day dinner while the ship swung along in open sea.

“Not very lately, Captain,” said Christiansson.

“You’ll see changes, then,” said the merchant.

“No doubt, no doubt!”

“The new Constitution has worked wonders for Iceland, sir.”

“Worked wonders, has it?”

“The barter trade has gone, the cash business is established everywhere, and as for the fishing, it’s another industry, sir.”

“Another industry, is it?”

“Judge for yourself, sir. Instead of the old open boats we have sixty smacks, manned by twenty men apiece, and going as far as six days out and home again.”

“Then the people were right, after all, who used to say the old trade was doomed and the water was to be the wealth of Iceland?”

“They were that, sir,” said the merchant, inflating his chest and pulling down his waistcoat. “Everybody has benefited by the change, and I shouldn’t be surprised if you find your own people better off than when you left them—that is to say, if they are still alive.”

“If they’re still alive,” said Christian Christiansson, dropping both voice and eyes.

“By the way, were you at home in Governor Stephen’s time, Mr. Christiansson?” asked the captain.

“Well, yes, Captain, yes, I was at home then,” said Christian Christiansson, with a momentary faltering in his voice.

“In that case you must have seen the beginning of the end. The old Governor tried to resist the change, and lived with a sword over his head all his latter days, poor devil.”

“A wise old man, though, wasn’t he?” said Christian Christiansson—he could scarcely trust himself to speak. “Wise?” said the merchant, with a curl of the lip. “No man is wise who will not be warned, and he had warning enough. But it was his sons who settled him.”

Christian Christiansson looked up with a start. “Ah, yes, of course, his sons, he had two sons, I remember. What became of them?”

“One of them is living at Thingvellir still.”

“Living still, is he?”

“If you call it living—up to his ears in debt.”

“In debt, you say?”

“Always has been, always will be. As for the other one—Olaf, Eric—what was his name, now?”

“Was it Oscar?” said Christian Christiansson, with a catch in his throat.

“Oscar it was—what a memory you must have, sir! Oscar Stephenson! He used to think he could do a little in your line, sir, but he was here to-day and there to-morrow, and he never did anything in his life except put an end to it. You would hear what happened—it all came out in the newspapers.”

“Died abroad, didn’t he?”

“Shot himself in a gambling hell, sir.”

“The young rascal!” said the captain, taking his pipe out of his mouth to laugh. “I took it out of him though. The last time he crossed from Iceland I made him sleep in the hold.”

“Serve him right, the scoundrel,” said the merchant.

“A scoundrel, was he?”

“He used to beat his poor young wife black and blue, sir.

“Beat his wife, you say?”

“She died of his ill-usage, anyway. He killed his father, too. The night he went away he broke open the Governor’s safe and carried off everything.”

“Broke open the Governor’s safe?”

“That’s so—the old man died a pauper.”

“Died a pauper?”

“Left nothing behind him, so it comes to the same thing. Every stick in the house had to be sold to the new Minister.”

“But is this true?”

“True enough, sir. Everything came out at the general election. The Governor and the old Factor were rival candidates, and they told us the family secrets.”

“And is this all they say at home of Oscar Stephenson?”

“All? Not a tenth of it.”

“Then his very name must be hated in Iceland?”

“Hated? Execrated, sir. Not that anybody cares about the old Governor; he is dead and gone with the rotten system he tried to support, but as for his son, nobody can say bad enough about him.”

“So that if he had lived and come back alive——”

“He would have been hounded out of the country, sir.”

“Just so, just so,” said Christian Christiansson, and rising with a startling gesture he stumbled back to his stateroom.

The merchant looked after him uneasily. “Who the deuce can he be, I wonder!”

“I wonder!” said the captain, pulling at his extinguished pipe.

It was impossible! The odium attaching to the name of Oscar Stephenson made it impossible that Christian Christiansson could ever reveal his identity. He had thought that the dust of death might cover his transgressions, but rumor and report had kept them alive and magnified them. Even the effort of his family to conceal the truth about his offenses had given birth to falsehood and fostered slander.

The people of Iceland must never know that Christian Christiansson was Oscar Stephenson. If they suspected, he must use means to deepen his disguise; if they questioned, he must deny.

What else had he expected? In thinking he could ever allow himself to be known in his true name and character, what secret craving of pride and vanity had he been cherishing unawares? His errand to Iceland was one of penance and atonement—at the bottom of his heart he had been looking to it as the top and high-tide of his career, the flush and crown of his success, as the hour of triumph when he was to justify the friends who had loved him, and to put to rout the enemies who had hated him, and to come off with flying colors at the last. If so, he was rightly punished. Oscar Stephenson was dead, and nothing and nobody could bring him to life again.

III

Christian Christiansson became more reserved as the vessel approached its destination. Every mile of the voyage was full of memories, and the sweetest were the bitterest, the happiest were the hardest to bear. He was standing in the bow when he caught his first glimpse of Iceland, glimmering white and blue like a sheeted ghost in the distance where its glaciers rose out of the sea. And then, thinking of the enchanted hopes of the days when he had first seen, it so, and how many of them now were dead under ashes, he would have broken down badly but for the captain, who came up behind him and said in his cheery croak:

“There it is, sir! There’s your country! That’s the place you’ve made them all hear about!”

Christian Christiansson returned to his cabin immediately, and he was not seen on deck again until the following morning, when the “Laura” was steaming up the fiord. And then the merchant, in his shore-going hat and overcoat, began to point out the sights to him as to a stranger.

“There’s the old town, sir. Bigger, I’ll be bound, than when you saw it last. That’s the new shipyard on the right, and that’s the leper hospital on the left. This is Engey, the island with the eider duck—famous place for young folks courting, sir. That’s the old cathedral in the middle, and that’s Government House to the left of it. They’re nearly hidden by the new warehouses now—I built them myself, sir.”

The “Laura” cast anchor under the town, amid a fleet of smacks and coal-hulks, and remembering how he had stood there last, Christian Christiansson’s emotion would have mastered him again but for the bustle that was going on around—the orders of the captain from the bridge, the shouts of the sailors who were lowering the ladder, and the cries of the men who had come out in small boats and were clambering up to the deck.

Christian Christiansson knew most of the boatmen, though some were old who had been middle-aged, and some were middle-aged who had been young, and some were bearded who had been boys. But none of them recognized Christian Christiansson, as they tipped their hats to him and pushed past to the officers of the ship.

“Good morning, mate! Good morning, Captain! What passengers this time?”

“Only one, besides Jon Oddsson, but he’s a host in himself—Christian Christiansson!”

“What! The great Christian Christiansson?”

In less than three minutes half the small boats were scurrying away to carry the news to the town, while the owners of the other half were scrambling for Christiansson’s luggage to have the honor of taking it ashore.

“Easy on, my lads,” shouted the captain. “Mr. Christiansson will go with me in the ship’s boat, and don’t you forget it.”

It was a full half-hour before this could come to pass, for Christian Christiansson had first to drink the captain’s health and the ship’s luck in the chart-room. When at length they were going ashore, with portmanteaus piled up in the bow of the boat and the captain chattering in the stern, it was almost more than Christian Christiansson could do to control himself under the memory of the dark night on which he went the other way, with no one to see him off except his mother, who sat by his side and held his hand as if she could never part with it.

When the boat drew up alongside, the jetty was packed with people, and as Christian Christiansson stepped ashore, with the air of a man trying to escape from observation but conscious of being under the full fire of it, a little fat fussy person with asthmatical breathing—Christiansson knew him instantly—bowed deeply and began to read something from a sheet of foolscap paper.

It was an effusive address, drawn up hastily by the Chairman of the Town Board, in the name of the inhabitants, beginning, “Illustrious fellow-countryman,” and going on to hail Christiansson as one who had “revived the ancient spirit and glory of a thousand years ago.”

Agitated and ashamed, hardly daring to speak lest the sound of his voice should betray him, Christian Christiansson replied with a few commonplaces, and then, amid a whispered chorus of “Modest!” “The modesty of greatness, sir,” he tried to push his way toward the hotel.

He had not made many paces before he was confronted by a young man in the uniform, hat, and cloak of a Government Secretary, who parted the crowd and said, in the breathless gasps of one who had been running:

“The Minister’s compliments, sir, and will you do him the honor to become his guest at Government House?”

Christian Christiansson tried to excuse himself, but every eye was on him, and seeing that he could not escape without the danger of exposing himself to suspicion, he yielded and allowed himself to be led away.

The little journey to Government House was like the progress to a Calvary. Every step was sown with memories—memories of the pleasures, the passions, the darling joys, the sorrows and the tragedies of the past—but while they seemed to strike up at him out of the very stones of the street, he had to nod and smile as the Secretary, walking by his side, rattled along with explanations and descriptions of the places they passed on their way.

“This is our principal thoroughfare, Mr. Christiansson. That is our chief hotel, and this is our national bank. The large building flying the Iceland falcon is our parliament hall. That is our old cathedral, sir, and this—this is Government House.”

Suffocated with shame, choking with a sense of duplicity, and trembling with the fear of detection, Christian Christiansson continued to say, “Yes” and “Is that so?” until he reached the porch of his old home. And then, remembering how and when he had passed out of it last—alone, at night, disgraced and with his father’s door closed against him—it was almost as much as he could do to restrain an impulse to turn about and fly. But just at that moment his father’s door opened quickly, and there on the threshold another man, in the uniform of the Governor, stood waiting with outstretched hand to welcome him.

The palpitation of Christian Christiansson’s heart was almost choking him. What wild harlequinade of real life was this, that he who had been so nearly flung out of Iceland should be received back to it with open arms? What mad game of blind-man’s buff were the powers of destiny playing with him? It was not for nothing that he had taken the name of Christian Christiansson. What invisible wings of Fate had been over him when he did so? And were they plumed to honor or to dishonor, to reward or to punishment, to joy or to sorrow, to life or to death?

IV

The Sheriff made Minister was the same man still. He received Christian Christiansson with suavest politeness but without a trace of recognition.

“Welcome!” he said. “Welcome to Iceland! My wife is in the drawing-room—she will be delighted to see you. We may go this way—this way through my bureau—do me the honor to follow me. Don’t knock against the stove—strangers do sometimes. A ramshackle old house, sir, for which my predecessor was responsible—I’m building a better in another part of the town. You’ve not yet dined? How fortunate! In these high latitudes we keep up primitive customs, Mr. Christiansson. We dine in the middle of the day, and you are just in the nick of time. I was holding a meeting of my executive when the news of your arrival reached me, and I took the liberty to invite one or two of my colleagues. This is the drawing-room—have the goodness to step inside.”

Muttering monosyllables only in reply to the Minister’s explanations, Christian Christiansson followed him through the house that was as familiar as the palm of his hand until he came face to face with his hostess and the friends who had been invited to meet him.

The hostess was an acquaintance of his school-days, grown middle-aged and matronly, and the friends were the Rector of the Latin School, looking elderly and iron-grey, and the Bishop, looking white and old. They received him with the utmost cordiality, but, like the Minister, without a sign of recognition.

Christian Christiansson bowed but scarcely spoke. He was no longer in fear of discovery, for now he knew that unless he wished it otherwise he could pass through Iceland unknown; but standing there in the old home, with the traces of his boyhood about him, his heart swelled and his throat thickened, and it was as much as he could do to control himself.

After a moment a servant announced dinner, and the Minister led the way to the dining-room. It was the same old room, with the same furniture, and hardly altered in any particular. But it was full of ghosts in the eyes of him who entered it again. In one rapid glance Christian Christiansson took in everything—the chair his father used to sit in, his mother’s place, Magnus’s, and Thora’s. And remembering that all these were gone; that everything connected with his own people had faded away; that the old house was inhabited by others now, and nothing remained except himself and he had neither part nor lot in it, the palpitation of his heart nearly choked him again, and he sat at the table like a guilty thing.

But if Christian Christiansson was silent the Minister talked incessantly.

“You will find that Iceland knows all about you, Mr. Christiansson—all about you! Speaking for myself I may say that in addition to the ordinary channels of intelligence I have some private sources of information. My son—you know my son, I think?”

Christian Christiansson bowed.

“My son has kept me constantly informed, so you will find me abreast of all your movements. Certainly, I take it amiss that he did not warn me of your coming—but perhaps he didn’t know. He didn’t? I thought as much. Not that he would have told me if you had wished it concealed. Neils is discretion itself, sir—discretion itself. For instance I could never persuade him to tell me who you were. I tempted him—I confess I tempted him. But no! ‘Business is business, father,’ he would say, and I was forced to be content.”

“Iceland is honored that you show yourself first in your own country, sir,” said the Rector.

“Indeed it is, Rector, and Mr. Christiansson will find that his fame is no empty bubble here.”

“There isn’t a student who doesn’t sing your songs, sir,” said the Rector.

“Nor a girl of fourteen in a farmhouse who doesn’t play your music,” said the Minister’s wife.

“Wonderful!” said the Minister himself. “It’s perfectly wonderful! But I always say the musician is the international artist. Other artists—the poets for example—require their translators, but the musician needs no go-between. He uses the one universal language, and when he speaks the whole world may hear. What a gift! What a thing it must be to be among the great composers! Perhaps it has its penalties, though. What does the poet say? They learn in suffering what they teach in song. What a thought that is! I wonder if it’s true? I wonder if every great song, every great symphony, every great opera is born of the suffering—the actual real life suffering, and perhaps in some cases the sin and sorrow—of the man who created it! What should you say, Mr. Christiansson?”

“God knows,” said Christiansson, and after that there was silence for a moment.

“Poor Stephen!” said the Bishop suddenly, and then everybody raised his face from the table.

“I was thinking,” said the Bishop, “that if sin and sorrow, added to the gift of genius, go to the making of great music, somebody was born in this very house who should have left immortal works behind him.”

Christian Christiansson had looked up with the rest, and now the Minister leaned across to him and said in an undertone, “A sad story, sir—a son of my predecessor who made shipwreck of his life, poor fellow.”

“You mean Oscar Stephenson?”

“Yes, indeed. But can it be possible that you knew him?”

“We talked of him on the steamer.”

“Ah, of course, certainly! And then he was a kind of humble confrère of yours, and conducted at Covent Garden. What a tragedy! What a scandal! When the dreadful news came from Nice everybody here felt ashamed. Such a well-known Iceland name, and the son of a former Governor! It was almost as if Iceland had been dishonored in the eyes of the world, sir. So different, so entirely different, from the effects, the glorious effects of your own magnificent achievements.”

Christian Christiansson was quivering from heart to eyelids, but the same mysterious impulse that compels the lamb to confront the dog forced him to go on.

“His mother is alive, isn’t she?” he said.

“Anna? Yes! She’s alive—that’s nearly all you can say about her.”

Christian Christiansson’s voice deepened and shook. “Is she sick?” he asked.

“Sick in fortune at all events. When the old Governor died she went to live with her other son at Thingvellir, and he is in trouble again, poor creature.”

“In debt, isn’t he?”

“Yes, he is in debt to the Bank for the interest and principal of some money which his father borrowed on mortgage to keep his brother out of prison.”

“And what is the Bank going to do with him?”

“Sell him up immediately.”

Christian Christiansson sank into silent reverie again, and when the conversation at the table had taken another turn, he said unexpectedly:

“He left a child behind him, didn’t he?”

“Who, sir? Oh, Oscar Stephenson? He did—a girl.”

“She’s living, too, isn’t she?”

“She is, sir—that is to say, for all I know to the contrary. Rector, Oscar’s little daughter is still alive, is she not?”

“Alive and well and hearty,” said the Rector.

Christian Christiansson’s eyes brightened visibly. “That’s good news, at all events,” he said.

The altered tone startled everybody, and nobody spoke for a little while. Then the Minister said:

“It is really very good of you to take an interest in the family of your poor dead confrère, and if I’d had the least idea you wished to hear more about them it would have been so easy—I might have invited the banker.”

“I’ll see him to-morrow,” said Christian Christiansson, and then, breaking through his reserve, he talked for the next half-hour on other subjects.

He talked well and the company were delighted, for there was no one to know that his vivacity was nervousness and his laughter something like shame. When the dinner was at an end the Bishop, who had fixed his eyes constantly on Christian Christiansson, rose and held out his hand to him.

“It has been a great happiness to have seen you, Mr. Christiansson,” he said, “and I trust we may meet again. I know nothing of music, sir, but I rejoice to see that the noble musician is only another name for the noble man, and I pray God to bless you body and soul.”

Christian Christiansson could not trust himself to reply, for the Bishop’s praise added a new bitterness to his remorse, so he stooped over the old man’s hand and kissed it.

The Bishop was pleased and touched. “How charming he is! How perfectly charming!” he said, as he put on his overcoat in the porch. “He reminds me of some one I’ve met somewhere.”

“Me, too,” said the Rector.

“Those beautiful manners, that captivating smile, and that voice that goes through and through you!”

“Does he resemble—or is it only because we have been talking at table——”

“You mean poor young——”

“Yes.”

“Ah me!” said the Bishop as he opened the door. “What brave things he might have done if Heaven had willed it!”

“He might have been another Christian Christiansson by this time,” said the Rector.

“Poor Stephen!” said the Bishop.

“Poor Anna!” said the Rector, and the two old friends went heavily down the path.

Meantime the man they were talking of, though they did not know it, was going through an agony of self-reproach. The duplicity of winning his way to the love and esteem of his people under the cover of a false name was suffocating him. It was necessary, it was inevitable, it was a part of the conduct that was forced upon him by the errand that had brought him home, but if they who welcomed him in the ignorance of their enthusiasm could know who he was, how their hearts would turn from him; how their sympathy would change to loathing and their admiration to contempt!

The evening was one of prolonged suffering to Christian Christiansson, for everything that happened in that house, every trivial object that met his eye, seemed charged with the power to torture him. As soon as he could, he excused himself, and asked to be shown to his room.

They showed him to the bedroom that had been occupied by Thora!

That was the last drop in his cup. He felt like a man who had stumbled into a hidden grave, and he wanted to say, “Give me any room in the house except this.” But he dared not speak, lest his slightest word should betray him.

When the door was closed, he flung himself in the armchair before the stove, and then one after one, as by flashes of lightning, he saw over again the scenes of his life with which that room was associated. He thought of his wedding night, when with a fluttering heart he came on tiptoe into the cosy nest of his bridal chamber, and heard Thora’s tremulous breathing behind the curtains of the bed. He thought of the joyous morning when her pale face shone like sunshine, and the air of the room was full of auroral radiance, because a child was born to them. He thought of the dark day when he found her lying dead, and of the heavy hour when he took his last look at her, and buried his compositions in her coffin.

Oh, miserable mummery! Oh, broken and senseless vow! Yet not senseless either, save to his own violated intention, for now he knew why he had taken the name of Christian Christiansson. In the blind spasm of his accusing conscience he had thought it was merely in order to deny himself the fame which his works were to win for him, but the inscrutable and ironical powers of Destiny had sterner purposes than that.

It was in order that, being dead as Oscar Stephenson, he should yet return to Iceland; in order that he should see the accumulated consequences of his conduct; in order that he should follow, as if with bare feet on the hot ground of a geyser, the footsteps and the funeral of his youth; in order that the living might torture him with gratitude, and the dead with memories; in order that God’s right hand of Justice should fall on him as it had never fallen before, and everything he had done should be paid for.

This was why he had taken the name and won the fame of Christian Christiansson. And the martyrdom of his new life was beginning.

V

As soon as the Bank opened in the morning Christian Christiansson called on the manager, and was received with extravagant politeness.

“I must take the liberty to introduce myself,” he began.

“Quite unnecessary,” said the banker with a bow, “all the world—I say all the world, sir, has been introduced to you.”

“You would receive a letter from my banker in London——”

“We did—it came with the mail that was brought by the ‘Laura.’”

“I think it asks you to honor my signature up to two hundred thousand crowns.”

“That is the amount, sir—two hundred thousand. And if you wish to draw any of it immediately——”

“I do,” said Christian Christiansson, and taking a large pocket-book from his breast-pocket he drew out a cheque-book and took up a pen.

“Mr. Palsson,” he said—the banker started at the mention of his name, then bowed and smiled—“I was much touched by a case of distress which the Minister spoke of at dinner yesterday, and I could wish to be of some assistance.”

“You are very generous, Mr. Christiansson, and if I can be of the slightest use to you—I say if I can be of the slightest use, sir, pray be good enough to command me.”

“It was the case of the family of the late Governor—I understand that they are in debt to the Bank and that the Bank is in the act of distraining.”

“Unhappily true, sir, but the Bank has been very indulgent—I say the Bank has been very indulgent—it was impossible to hold back longer.”

“I think that the debt is for interest on a mortgage on the Inn-farm at Thingvellir, and that the money was borrowed by the father of the present owner?”

“That is so, sir, but the interest is long in arrears, and the mortgage—I say the mortgage itself, sir, is the reverse of a good security.”

“Mr. Palsson,” said Christian Christiansson, “if I were to pay you the interest out of my own pocket would that stop the proceedings?”

The banker’s breath seemed to be arrested. “You are very good, sir,” he said after a moment. “But the interest is large; you can hardly be prepared for the amount of it.”

“What is the amount of it?” asked Christian Christiansson.

“Eight thousand crowns at least, sir—I say at least eight thousand. And in any case I should be unable to receive it. Things have gone too far. The deed of execution has been served, the advertisements of the auction have been published, and the whole matter is now in the hands of the Sheriff.”

“When is the auction to take place?”

“Let me see,” said the banker, consulting a newspaper, “this is the last day of the year, the auction is advertised for to-morrow, sir.”

“Did you say to-morrow?” said Christian Christiansson, rising suddenly.

“To-morrow at nine in the morning, sir.”

Christian Christiansson resumed his seat and sat for some moments nibbling the top of the pen. Then he said:

“Mr. Palsson, I have been many years abroad, but I seem to remember that when landed property has to be sold by the law in Iceland three auctions are necessary—two at the office of the Sheriff, and the third on the estate itself.”

“That is so, sir, but unfortunately this is the third—the two others have taken place already.”

“So the Inn-farm must go to the hammer in any case?”

“It must go to the hammer in any case.”

“You think there is no help for it?”

“I am sure, sir—I say I am sure there is no help for it.”

“Ah, well—if it must be, it must be,” said Christian Christiansson, and then, as by an after-thought, dipping the pen in the ink, “The interest is eight thousand crowns, you say?”

“At least eight thousand, sir. With legal and other expenses probably ten—I say probably ten.”

“And the principal is——”

“The principal is one hundred thousand, sir.”

“Poor souls, poor souls!” said Christian Christiansson. He began to write his cheque, but the banker went on talking.

“I am sorry for the mother, sir—I say I am sorry for the mother. She belongs to a generation which is rapidly passing away, but there are still many in the town who remember her. A good, motherly soul, sir—it is a pity misfortune should fall so fast on her in the evening of her days—— Blotting paper?”

“Thank you.”

“I am sorry for the son, too—I am very sorry for the son. An Ishmael, sir—always was and always will be—but he seems to have had a terrible time of it. To tell the truth the farm was frightfully over-mortgaged at the beginning, and if he had thrown it up fifteen years ago it might have been better for himself and the Bank and everybody. Apparently he wished to hold on to it for the sake of the family, and to give the poor wretch his due he has made a splendid fight for it—I say he has made a splendid fight for it.”

Christian Christiansson had written his cheque and was tearing it out of the cheque-book.

“Then, as you say, sir, the mortgage was not made by himself, and everybody knows the conditions under which the first debt was contracted. Ah, if that scapegrace brother could only be here to-day! When a man does wrong he seems to think the consequences of his crime will end with his own action, but they are like snowballs rolling in the snow—I say they are like—— Two hundred thousand crowns, sir?”

Christian Christiansson had handed his cheque to the banker, and the banker, fixing his eye-glasses, was reading the amount of it.

“Do you really mean that you wish to draw the whole sum at once, Mr. Christiansson?”

“If you please,” said Christian Christiansson.

The banker began to laugh. “Certainly we have no highwaymen in Iceland, sir—I say we have no highwaymen—but unless the money is wanted for immediate purposes——”

“It is wanted for immediate purposes, Mr. Palsson.”

“In that case, of course—certainly—may I ask you to wait a little?”

It took half-an-hour to find the money for Christian Christiansson’s cheque, and when it came it was in three banknotes of fifty thousand each, signed specially by the Minister, and fifty other notes of a thousand. Christiansson put the whole of them in his pocket-book, and they filled it to its utmost capacity.

“I’ve given you a great deal of trouble, Mr. Palsson.”

“It has been a pleasure, sir—I say it has been a pleasure. I only regret that I was unable to help you in that other matter. If you had come to me two days ago I should have sent a messenger to the Sheriff, and perhaps he——”

“Who is the Sheriff in that case, Mr. Palsson?”

“The Sheriff of Ames, sir. He lives at Borg.”

“How far is that from Thingvellir?”

“Only some thirty to forty miles, sir.”

“About as far as from here to there?”

“About the same, sir, but in this country of no roads and no railways that is sometimes a long day’s journey.”

“Just so! Good day, and thank you, Mr. Palsson!”

“Good day to you, Mr. Christiansson,” said the banker, and looking after him he thought, “What does he want with two hundred thousand crowns at once, I wonder? And why—I say why did he wish to pay the interest for Magnus Stephenson?”

“Thank God I’ve come in time!” thought Christian Christiansson.

And going out of the Bank he told himself, with a thrill of hope and joy, that the inscrutable powers of Destiny, which seemed to have made him the plaything of chance and error, could not be wholly evil if they had brought him back to Iceland at the moment of his people’s greatest peril, that he might succor and save them at their utmost need.

VI

The morning was heavy and cheerless. Dark woolly clouds were rolling over the mountains, a cold wind was coming up from the east, and the voice of the North Sea was loud and shrill.

“We shall have snow before the year’s out, sir,” said one of a group of fishermen who were stamping their feet and beating their arms at the bottom of the Bank steps.

“No time to lose!” thought Christian Christiansson. “I must send for horses immediately and start off without delay.”

But before going to Thingvellir there was something to do in Reykjavik, and that was the most important thing of all—by some excuse or subterfuge he had to see his child as a first step toward claiming and recovering her. She had been ten years at the farm, but he thought she was still at the Factor’s, and he bent his steps in that direction.

Of the Factor himself he knew no more than he had been able to glean at breakfast without betraying a particular interest—that he was still alive, that enough had been saved out of the wreck of his fortunes to enable him to keep his house, and that he lived the life of a misanthrope, blaming the whole world for his misfortunes and all the trouble of his days.

Christian Christiansson might have walked to the Factor’s blindfold, but the house itself when he came in front of it seemed strangely unfamiliar. The once bright little villa looked like a witless man who has lost his place in the world and all hope and all respect for himself. The white paint of the walls was cracked and dirty, the windows were smeared with the salt which is borne on the breath of the sea, the garden was wild, and the cobbled path was overgrown with grass.

It was hardly like a house a young girl might live in, but after he had rung the bell he listened for a light step in the hall. The door was opened by a withered old woman in white ringlets, with her gown tucked up in front. It was Aunt Margret, but the little old maid, once so pert and dainty, had the neglected and frightened look of a cat in an empty house, left behind and forgotten.

Her face was the first he had yet seen of the faces of his own people, and so hard did he find it to play his part that he had mentioned her name before he was aware of it, and she had started perceptibly, as if at the sound of a familiar voice.

“Is your brother at home, Margret Neilsen?” he asked.

“He is always at home,” she answered, “but he never receives anybody now. Who shall I say wishes to see him?”

“Say that Christian Christiansson would like to speak to him.”

Aunt Margret, who was not wearing her spectacles, seemed to listen for a moment as to a voice that came to her from afar, and then she asked him into the house.

As he passed through the hall he listened, in his turn, for the silvery voice he wished to hear, but he heard nothing save the sound of his own footsteps, for the house echoed like a vault. The sense of change made him forget for a moment the object of his visit, and when he stepped into the sitting-room and found the familiar room so different from what he remembered it, so bare, so bleak, so stamped with the seal of poverty (with its scrap of worn carpet on the floor and its two broken firebricks in the cold stove), he felt as if the ironical powers that controlled his fate had brought him there not to see his child but only to torture him.

After a moment the Factor came in with the old fire in his eyes and the old spirit in his step, but wearing a threadbare skull-cap over a threadbare suit that had once been black, and looking like a grey rock in a green place when the sun has gone from it, leaving it grim and hoary.

“I heard of your arrival, Mr. Christiansson,” he said, “and I suppose I ought to thank you for your call, but I am an old man who has lived past his day, and I can’t think why you wished to see me.”

Christian Christiansson had his subterfuge ready. “Coming from London,” he said, “I thought I might be able to tell you something of your daughter.”

“Helga? You know my daughter Helga?”

“I used to know her, but our ways have parted, and we have met only once in ten years. Nevertheless I know all about her, and can tell you what has happened.”

“What has happened, sir?”

“She has become a great singer.”

“A singer, has she?”

“A great opera-singer.”

“Then she’s rich, I suppose?”

“In the way of being so, perhaps, but famous at all events, and a favorite all over Europe.”

The Factor was silent for a moment, leaning on his stick; then he said:

“Well, that will suit her mother, I daresay. As for me I don’t think it matters. It’s ten years since Helga Neilsen left Iceland, and I’ve never seen the scribe of a line from her since. If she’s rich I’m poor and she doesn’t care anything about it. What I call a daughter is one who remembers her father when he is old and past work and the world has got its heel on him. I had a daughter like that once, but they killed her between them—they killed her between them, I say.”

The old man’s voice was breaking, and thinking to comfort him Christian Christiansson said, hardly knowing what he was saying:

“I heard of your trouble, Mr. Neilsen.”

“When did you hear of it? Helga couldn’t have told you. She had too much to do with her sister’s death to talk of it. Did you, perhaps—in those days you speak of—did you know my daughter’s husband?”

“Yes,” said Christian Christiansson, for in that heart-quelling moment there seemed to be no escape from it.

“Then you knew a scoundrel, sir,” said the Factor.

Christian Christiansson dared not flinch, though the Factor’s lash had cut him to the bone. With a throttled utterance he tried to plead for charity. “Oscar Stephenson never ceased to reproach himself for his share in Thora’s death or to mourn——”

“It’s a pretty way to mourn for one daughter to corrupt another,” said the Factor.

“Corrupt?”

“What else was it? He hadn’t been a year in London before he persuaded Helga to follow him.”

“Mr. Neilsen, I have no right to speak for the man we are talking of, but Helga is your daughter, and if it is any comfort to you I tell you that you are wrong—I know you are wrong——”

“How do you know—he lived in the same house, didn’t he?”

“Nevertheless I—I believe in my heart that whatever his failures of duty to your daughter Thora while she was alive, when she was dead he reverenced her memory too much to——”

“Was it reverencing her memory to sell the right to violate her grave, and then waste the money at the gaming-tables?”

The perspiration was breaking out on Christian Christiansson’s forehead and he had forgotten the object of his errand, when the door opened and he looked up in the expectation of seeing Elin. It was only Aunt Margret again, but now washed and oiled, and wearing her spectacles.

Christian Christiansson placed a chair for the childless woman, and began to talk about the child.

“The man we are speaking of had his faults, God knows, but if you had heard him talk about you, sir, and your sister and his daughter—especially his little daughter——”

“He talked about his daughter, did he?”

“Constantly—he seemed to be always thinking of her.”

“He never did anything else, then. He left me to bring her up and never sent a penny toward her support.”

“He was poor himself perhaps—indeed I know he was poor.”

“Then what about the letters he wrote to his mother, bragging of his business and the fine friends he was making?”

Christian Christiansson dropped his head.

“And when my own business was broken up, did he offer to relieve me of my burden?”

“That was afterward, Oscar—you are confusing the dates,” said Aunt Margret.

“Hold your tongue, Margret Neilsen—I know what I’m saying. No, sir, when the ingrate at Government House made me a bankrupt and I didn’t know if I should have a roof to cover me, it was the father’s brother who had to take the child off my hands.”

“Magnus?”

“Magnus Stephenson, and he had his mother to provide for already.”

“Then Elin is at Thingvellir! And Magnus has been bringing her up all these years! How good of him! And now he is a broken man himself, poor fellow!”

“Serve him right if he is,” said the Factor. “I’ve no pity for him either—he was the beginning of all the trouble.”

“But when a brave man who has borne other people’s burdens——”

“A brave fool, you mean, sir. Fortune comes to every man once, sir, and it came to him, but he wouldn’t have it. Look at this room, sir. You may not believe it, but I used to have four assistants eating and drinking with me here, and Magnus Stephenson was one of them. He had good ideas in those days, and if he had stayed with me we should have kept out the free traders, and he would have been the first man in the west of Iceland by this time. I gave him every chance, too. I was willing to make him my partner and marry him to my daughter Thora. But no, grasp all lose all, he insulted my girl and turned up his nose at my contract. And now he’s down, but he’s not done yet. What gets wet on a fool gets dry on a knave, and Magnus Stephenson will be worse than a bankrupt before we’ve heard the end of him.”

“Mr. Neilsen,” said Christian Christiansson, who was breathing heavily, “you are wrong again, and you ought to know it.”

“Who says I am wrong, sir? And what am I wrong in?”

“You are wrong in thinking that when Magnus Stephenson refused to marry your daughter Thora he did so from selfishness.”

“If it wasn’t selfishness, sir, what was it?”

“It was unselfishness—sublime unselfishness.”

“So?”

“Thora had found that she loved his brother Oscar, and to make her happy Magnus was willing to give her up to him. But the contract was made, and you had built all your hopes on it, so to save your daughter from your displeasure he allowed it to appear that he refused her, although he loved her dearly and his heart was breaking.”

The Factor rose to his feet with a wild lustre in his eyes. “But is this true?” he said.

“It is God’s truth, sir.”

“Who did you have it from?”

“From one who should have told you himself fifteen years ago but dared not.”

The Factor turned rigidly to his sister. “Margret Neilsen, do you hear what he is saying?”

Aunt Margret, who was breathing audibly, merely bowed her head.

“I don’t know what to say to you, sir. If what you tell me is true I’ve been hating the wrong man for half a life-time. And yet people talk of Providence!”

“God veils His face from us, Factor. We are only His little children. He has His own plans and purposes.”

“Good Lord! sir,” said the Factor in a husky croak, “what purpose can there be in blinding a man for fifteen years and letting him break up all his friendships?”

He was walking to and fro to calm his nerves under the shock as of a moral earthquake.

“If I have been wrong about Magnus I may have been wrong about Oscar, also. I got frightened when he signed my name, so I helped to send him out of Iceland. And now he is dead!”

Christian Christiansson’s head was down—his throat was surging.

“His father is dead, too. We quarrelled about our children, and now it seems it all began with a blunder! He was my friend for fifty years, and I’ve never had another. There’s no such thing as making an old friend in your old age, sir, and when your friends are gone the world gets lonely. Perhaps I was hard on Oscar, too. He was my godson. I liked the boy in spite of everything, and he always came to see the old man the minute he set foot in Iceland.”

Christian Christiansson wanted to throw off all disguise and cry, “And I’m here again, godfather,” but he could not and dared not speak. He rose to go, and the Factor took him to the door.

“I’ll come again before I leave the country,” he said at the last moment, “and then perhaps I’ll have something to say to you.”

When the Factor returned to the sitting-room, looking like the same grey rock but with clouds enveloping it, Aunt Margret, who had scarcely moved, said in the frightened voice of one who has seen a ghost:

“Do you know who that was?”

“What do you mean?”

“That was Oscar Stephenson.”

“Margret Neilson, you are mad. Oscar Stephenson is dead.”

“Then he came to life again. That is Oscar Stephenson as sure as I’m a living woman!”

VII

Christian Christiansson left the Factor’s house glowing with excitement. Oh, for the hour when he could lay aside the armor of duplicity! When he could say to his own people, “I am Oscar Stephenson. Let the world think me Christian Christiansson, but at least you must know me for who I am.”

It was necessary and inevitable that he should reveal himself to his own family! How else could he carry out the plan he had formed of buying the farm at the auction to-morrow morning and giving it back to his brother? And how, except by right of blood, by right of parentage, could he claim the child and take her away with him when he returned to England?

In this mood he went back to Government House and announced his intention of going on to Thingvellir.

“Thingvellir!” said the Minister. “It’s only natural, sir, that you should wish to see our great historic meeting-place, the scene of so many of our Sagas. But why go there to-day? It isn’t every day the old town is alive, but this is the last of the year, you know, and before midnight we shall have many interesting ceremonies. Why not stay until to-morrow, and then I shall be happy to go with you?”

“I have a particular reason for wishing to go to-day,” said Christian Christiansson.

“That’s a pity, and our townspeople will be wofully disappointed. To tell you the truth, I’ve done nothing all morning but receive deputations asking me to offer you a public banquet. Every class of the community is excited, and the students are talking of a torchlight procession.”

“That settles it, Mr. Finsen, I must go now in any case.”

“You are too modest, Mr. Christiansson. But perhaps you don’t know the way. And then look at the clouds—a snowstorm is coming.”

“I know every inch of the way, and the snowstorm, if it is not too heavy, will only add to my pleasure.”

“If it is not too heavy! Believe me, there’s nothing in the world more miserable than being caught in a blinding snowstorm on the Moss Fell Heath. But if you must you must, sir, and if you have a particular reason for going it is not for me to keep you back.”

“It is late, Mr. Finsen, and the days are short—I must get off immediately.”

“I’ll send for ponies without delay, sir. You’ll want two—one for yourself, the other for your pony-boy. You’ll be back in a few days, I trust, so you’ll leave your baggage behind you.”

The pony-boy with the ponies came round at noon, and by that time, the report of Christiansson’s departure having passed through the town, a number of the townspeople had gathered at the gate to see him off. Among them were Palsson the banker, Oddsson the merchant, Zimsen the captain, Jonsson the chairman of the Town Board, and (most surprising of all) the Factor.

There was a tingling atmosphere of unsatisfied curiosity in the little crowd, for rumor of the two hundred thousand crowns had passed from lip to lip, and people were asking who the stranger was, who his father had been, and what he could want with so much money. When Christian Christiansson, in his long blue ulster and close-fitting fur cap, came out of the house, and parted from his host and hostess at the porch, he seemed to be in high spirits, for he saluted everybody at the gate, and mentioned most of the company by name.

This intensified the curiosity, and amid a running fire of chaff and laughter the bolder ones began to probe with questions.

“You’ll put up at the Inn-farm to-night, Mr. Christiansson?”

“No doubt, Mr. Jonsson, no doubt.”

“But there’s to be an auction there in the morning, you know—I say there’s to be an auction in the morning, so you’ll be turned out to-morrow.”

“Unless,” said the captain, with a wink in his weather eye, “unless Mr. Christiansson buys up the old place and turns farmer and innkeeper.”

“And why not, Captain Zimsen, why not?”

“Hard work early and late, sir.”

“Well, no man ever won the day by snoring.”

Christian Christiansson had swung to the saddle, when the Factor came up to him with his rheumy eyes shining, and said:

“Don’t be surprised if I follow you to Thingvellir. Life is short, and before I die I have something to say to Magnus Stephenson.”

“We talked of him on the ship, sir, didn’t we—him and his rascally young brother?” said the merchant.

“We did,” said Christian Christiansson, and then at the last moment, the pony-boy being mounted, and everything ready, a spirit of recklessness came over him, and he added, “But you made one mistake, Mr. Oddsson.”

“And what was that, Mr. Christiansson?”

“You said Oscar Stephenson had never done anything in his life, except putting an end to it, but he did one thing once, I remember. He stood for parliament when I was at home, and gave a dreadful drubbing to the dunderhead who opposed him. Good-bye!”

When he was gone it was the same is if a spell had been broken. Something in his last word, something in his laugh, and something in the lifting of his cap as he cantered up the road, had struck a vague consciousness of his identity into the gossips at the gate. For a moment they stared into each other’s face in blank bewilderment and then the merchant said:

“Who the deuce can he be then?”

“Shall I tell you who my sister says he is?” said the Factor.

“Who?”

“Oscar Stephenson himself.”

It fell in their midst like a thunderbolt.

“Well, that would explain something,—I say that would explain something,” said the banker, and he told the story of Magnus Stephenson’s interest.

Within half-an-hour the word had gone through the town with the rush and rattle of the holme wind. Christian Christiansson was Oscar Stephenson! Almost in as many words he had said so himself, and there could not be a doubt about it!

That night at the Artisans’ Institute there were a hundred stories of Oscar Stephenson. Some of them were good, and they were told with tears; but some were bad, yet they were received with peals of laughter. In the smoking-room of the hotel the students sang Oscar’s songs until the lamps went out, and then they bellowed them through the darkness in a dozen different keys, while the windows rattled with the vibration of their lusty voices.

Meantime a group of sedater citizens had taken their surmise to the Minister, and he had said with his shy smile:

“We cannot uncover his nakedness, you know, but we can go on with the arrangements for the banquet, and so tempt him to reveal himself.”

They went on with them immediately. The banquet was to be at the Templars’ Hall the night after the stranger’s return to Reykjavik. The Minister was to propose, “Christian Christiansson, Iceland’s favorite son and heir!” Then the students were to sing Oscar Stephenson’s patriotic hymn, “Isafold! my Isafold! great land of frost and fire.” And after the guest had spoken the cathedral choir were to give Christian Christiansson’s stirring anthem, “Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, who shall rise up in His holy place? Even he who has clean hands and a pure heart, and hath not lifted up his mind with vanity!”

Everything else was forgotten! The odium attaching for ten years to Oscar Stephenson’s name was gone! The dishonor which Death itself could not kill had disappeared before the blinding light of genius, the glittering shrine of success!

VIII

Meantime the man himself was on his way to Thingvellir. The clouds might be low, but his heart was high; the sea might break on the black beach with a monotonous moan, but his whole being sang a song of hope. A wild activity of thoughts, imagination, feelings, and impulses possessed him, and for the first time since he returned to Iceland he was entirely happy.

God had permitted him to come in time to save his people from being made houseless and homeless! He had sinned and he had suffered, but the sacred duty of atonement was not to be denied him! The Inn-farm, which had been mortgaged to save him from the grip of the law, was to be given back unburdened to his brother! Two hundred thousand crowns were in his breast pocket, and they were to buy the old place at the auction to-morrow morning!

As he cantered up the road that led out of the town his soul careered like a leaf in autumn under a bottom wind of hope and joy. He saw himself arriving at the farm in the dusk of the evening and meeting his mother and Magnus and his daughter Elin. He heard himself saying, “Mother, don’t you know me? I am Oscar, and I have come back to make amends.” And next day, when the auction would be over, the Sheriff gone and everybody crying for happiness, he saw himself taking Elin between his knees—Elin with the eyes of Thora, yet with his own face looking at him as in a glass—and saying, “You are to come with me now, my dearest, and if you have gone short of anything as a child I will make it up to you as a woman!”

The pony-boy caught the contagion of his high spirits, and as they cantered along he sang snatches of the Elf-song:

“Dance by night and dance by day,
Life and time will pass away,
Love alone will last alway.”

He was a tall lad of eighteen who must have resembled his mother, for he had the pink and white face of a girl. They had passed the hot springs and the Ellida river, and risen to the heights of the first hill on their journey before the sunshine of the boy’s spirits began to be overcast. Then as they rested their ponies and tightened the girths, he said in a frightened whisper:

“Do you hear it, sir?”

“Hear what?” said Christian Christiansson.

“The Peak,” said the boy, pointing to a rock of rugged outline that stood on the topmost line of the mountain to their right, with a dark cloud, that was like a great monster of the air, poised above it.

“What about it, my boy?”

“The storm and the Peak are friends, sir, for they always talk together before the wind comes down. When people hear them talking they tremble, because they know the storm is coming.”

“Let us get on then,” said Christian Christiansson.

In half-an-hour they had come to the bleak and barren country of the Red Hill, the Red Lake, and the Deep Tarn with its dark waters and gloomy shore, and by that time the great cloud which had been poised above the Peak was broken into many parts, and each part seemed to be fighting the others in the sky, for there were volleys of sound like thunder.

“Hadn’t we better stop at the farm at Middale, sir?” said the boy.

But Christian Christiansson thought of his mother, of Magnus, of Elin, and of the auction to-morrow morning, and he determined to push on.

They were on the edge of the Moss Fell Heath when the snow began to fall. It fell at first in big flakes like dead butterflies, for there was yet no wind on the ground, although the clouds were still scurrying across the sky and the noise overhead was deafening.

Christian Christiansson remembered what the Minister had said, that of all the miseries of life the worst was to be caught in a snowstorm on this desolate moor, and for one moment he asked himself if he ought not to go back to Middale and wait there until the storm had passed. But at the next instant he told himself that the devilish powers which had dogged his steps since he landed in Iceland were trying to keep him back from the good work he meant to do, so he must go on in any case.

“You’re not afraid, my lad?”

“Not to say afraid,” faltered the boy.

“Let us gallop, then.”

The Heath itself when they came to it was a white wilderness within the embracement of black rocks and mountains. They were only able to find the road by following the beacons, which were like white-headed sentinels in single file, with their backs to the storm, going on and on over the wide waste.

The sense of desolation was appalling, and a voice seemed to say, “Go back while there is time to do so.” But again Christian Christiansson thought of his mother, of Magnus, of Elin, and of the auction to-morrow morning, and he urged his horse through the deepening snow.

They had not gone much farther when the wind came down and hurled itself in their faces. The snowflakes were pelted and slung at them like splinters of flint. It seemed as if every flake would cut through their skin. Then the cold became intense. Ice gathered over their eyes, and at every other minute they had to stop to break it away.

Finally the darkness descended upon them, the deadly, implacable darkness of the wind and snow. A wild torrent of whirling snowflakes swept over the moor and concealed them from each other. It became so dark that they could only see a few yards on either side, and they had to cry out at intervals in order to keep together.

They were now in the mighty grip of the storm and could no longer think of going back. The wind hissed and howled and wept; the snow pelted and cut. There was no shelter of rock or tree or bush on any side; there was nothing about or above them but the wide wilderness and the thickening darkness.

Christian Christiansson was sorry for the boy, but thus far his own spirits had risen with every fresh phase of the tempest. He had a sense of fighting a fierce duel with the elements. At the other end of his journey were his mother and Magnus and Elin, and if he could reach them before morning he would be able to succor and save them. It was a race as for life, for the lives of his nearest and dearest, against the wild wantonness of elemental powers. Nature herself, with more than her usual heartlessness toward man, was at devilish war with his effort to save his people. But he would conquer her! Let it snow or blow or hail or thunder, he would reach home in time for the auction!

The ponies were the first to fail. The one that Christian Christiansson rode was a strong mare of mature age, but the boy’s was a young one, newly broken, and it seemed to be suffocating in the snow and the wind. After a time it turned its head from the storm and refused to go forward, and then the boy had to alight and walk in front of it and tug it along by the bridle. In a little while it stopped altogether and slid down on its side, and could with difficulty be raised to its feet again.

“He’s only four, and this is his first journey,” said the boy in a whimpering tone, as he laid the lash on the pony’s back.

Then the boy himself began to give in. He wore bag gloves (with two thumbs but no fingers), and in tugging at the bridle he lost one of them. As a consequence his bare hand got frost-bitten and was soon quite powerless. In walking before the horse his clothes had frozen stiff, and he was hardly able to put one foot before the other. His voice became weaker and his speech more broken, and when his companion called back to him he could scarcely send forward his reply. At last in a faint voice he cried:

“Come and fetch me, sir—I have no strength left.”

A little later he became delirious, talked of his mother, and tried to strip off his clothes as if he were going to bed.

Christian Christiansson experienced deep anguish of mind at the thought of the sufferings he had inflicted upon the lad, but he lifted him to the saddle with his back to the horse’s head, and comforted him as well as he could in his awful situation.

“Courage, my boy, courage! The House of Rest cannot be far off. We’ll shelter there. The storm will pass.”

A vision of the little house of basaltic rocks, which he had entered with Helga, had been floating through his mind like a dream of the Calenture. How long it took him to get there and with what desperate exertions he never knew, but walking in front of the young pony and leading the mare beside him, he reached the little house at last.

As soon as they were under cover, the boy dropped to his knees, and, with a gibbering accent, as if speaking through half-frozen lips, he began to repeat the Greed, “I believe in God the Father Almighty.” He thought he was saying his prayers.

The House of Rest was badly provided, but it had hay for the horses, and they began to munch it immediately. There was no lamp, and when the door was shut to keep out the driving snow, the place was in pitch darkness.

After a while the air became warm with the breath of the ponies, and the men’s clothes melted. This made them very cold, and they had to beat their arms under their armpits to keep their bodies from shivering and their teeth from chattering. Then the atmosphere grew hot, for the ponies began to sweat, and the boy stripped off his outer garments, and lay down with the young horse, boy and horse side by side, as if they had been human companions.

Christian Christiansson threw himself upon the wooden platform prepared for travelers, and listened to the storm outside. The wind was howling and hissing around the corners of the house, and he had the sense of the snow becoming deeper and deeper about it. If the storm continued the little place might be buried before long, and then it would be difficult or impossible to cut a way out.

His heart fell low. He began to feel appalled by the awfulness of his position. The devilish elements were beating him. He was only half way on his journey, and if he could not make the rest of it before morning, his mother and Magnus and little Elin would be homeless. Yet the storm showed no sign of abating; the ponies were spent, the boy was done, and it seemed impossible to go on.

Suddenly a new thought came to him and he raised himself and cried:

“My boy, my boy! do you know the road from Borg to Thingvellir?”

“Yes, sir,” said the boy’s drowsy voice in the darkness.

“What sort of road is it?”

“Awful, sir.”

“Worse than this?”

“Ten times worse—over the Hengel mountain and past the boiling pits, sir.”

“Thank God!” said Christian Christiansson, and he lay down again with content, telling himself that the same storm that was keeping him back must keep back the Sheriff, and therefore there could be no auction to-morrow morning.

The storm still hissed and howled and wept in the wild wilderness outside, but the tempest had now lost its terrors. The boy and the young pony had fallen asleep and were breathing heavily, the mare was munching the last of the hay, and Christian Christiansson, with his heart at ease and a sense of safety, had settled himself for the night and was dropping off into unconsciousness when there came a thud on the roof of the little house.

He started up and listened, and again he heard the thud-thud over his head. The mare also heard the strange sounds, and ceasing to eat she came across to him, as if in fear, and laid her head upon his legs. It was not at first that he realized that the sounds were human footsteps and that somebody was walking on the roof, but as soon as he did so he cried out to know who was there, and a voice that was like a voice out of a grave answered, “Let me in.”

He removed the saddles with which he had barricaded the door and opened it. There was then another doorway of the snow that had fallen since he entered, but in a little while he had cut it away with the spade that hung on the wall for that purpose. At the next moment a man crossed the threshold—a man and a horse.

IX

“Oh, God! What a night,” said the stranger. He seemed to be scared and awe-stricken by the uproar he had come out of.

When Christian Christiansson had closed and barricaded the door afresh the darkness seemed denser than ever.

“Have you any matches?” he asked.

“No—yes—that is to say, I’m afraid they’re damp,” said the stranger. He struck one and it spluttered out.

“Take care then. A boy is lying asleep on the floor. Bring your horse this way.”

“Thanks! How lucky I heard you! I had lost the road, and was wondering what hollow ground I was walking on when you shouted from below. It nearly frightened my life out.”

It was a young voice; the stranger was clearly a young man, probably a young farmer. They talked together in the darkness, neither being able to see the other’s face.

“Who are you, my lad?” asked Christian Christiansson.

“I am Eric Arnasson. I come from Thingvellir. Who are you, sir?”

“I am a traveler, and I’m on my way there.”

“Going to the sale, I suppose?”

“Yes.”

“Then I have just come from the house you are bound for.”

“Are you a farm-servant at the Inn-farm?”

“Used to be, but the hands are all gone now. I was the last to leave, sir.”

“Where are Gudrun and Jon Vidalin?”

“Farming Korastead these ten years sir.”

“And Asher?”

“He has gone too. We thinned down fast when the master got into trouble. I was with him from the time I was a little chap, but he paid me off this afternoon.”

“Where’s old Maria?”

“Dead long ago.”

“Is there nobody left then?”

“Nobody but the master and his old mother and his young daughter.”

“Daughter?”

“Well, everybody calls her so, but she’s only his niece.”

“Is there nobody else in the house to-night?”

“Not a soul that I know of. And they will not be there another night, I suppose.”

“But the sale can not take place to-morrow, my lad. The Sheriff will never be able to get there to-day. He has to come from Borg, and the road over the mountain is even wilder than this.”

“The Sheriff is there now, sir.”

“Now?”

“I left him in the kitchen when I came away, making a list of the house property, and he was to sleep at the Parsonage.”

Christian Christiansson’s hair seemed to rise from his head. There was no escape from the terrible journey. He must go on in spite of the storm. His limbs felt like lead, and when he tried to move them he could only do so with a tremendous effort. But he shook off his torpor and began to saddle his mare.

“What do you think is the time, my lad?”

“I don’t know, my watch has stopped. And then I have no light either. It must be seven o’clock at least. But you’re not thinking of going on to-night, sir?”

“I must.”

“You’ll never get to Thingvellir, sir. It was bad enough for me with my back to the storm, but it will be ten times worse for you with your face to it. You’ll be lost. Your friends will see no more of you.”

“Good night! Take the boy back to Reykjavik in the morning.”

Out on the snowfield again Christian Christiansson was conscious of nothing but a headlong impulse to go on. The saddle was damp, and he had a sensation of riding in cold water; the snow was deeper than before, and sometimes his horse stumbled up to its girths; the darkness was now the darkness of night, and it was with difficulty that he could follow the line of the beacons; the wind hurled itself against his body, the snow slung itself against his face, but still he strained along, for a new and inspiring thought had come to him.

The Almighty was fighting on his side in his fierce war with the elements! The devilish powers of Nature had been trying to keep him back from saving his people, and when he reached the House of Rest they had lulled him into a false repose, but God had sent the farm-servant to warn him that his dear ones were still in danger, and that if he stayed there until morning he would arrive at his journey’s end too late! Thinking so, his heart grew strong, for he felt himself in the immediate presence of Him who was greater than the greatest tempest.

But after some two hours had passed the sacred fire of this theory began to fail him. He was growing faint, and the beatings of his heart were suffocating; he was also losing his way in the deepening snow, and when his mare stumbled into the drifts he was scarcely strong enough to drag her out of them. Then, before he was aware of it, the voices of Nature were speaking to him again.

“Why did you leave the House of Rest? The Sheriff may be at the farm, but no buyers can get there to-night, and without people to bid there can be no auction.”

Just as this thought came to him he saw a red speck gleaming through the darkness, and he turned his horse’s head in the direction of the light. It proved to be in the window of a farm-house, and finding the door he shouted, and presently a man came out to him.

“I’ve lost my way,” he cried, over the wailing of the wind. “Tell me, please, what place this is?”

“This is Korastead,” the man cried back, and then a woman came into the hall-way and stood behind him. The man was Jon Vidalin and the woman was Gudrun, but neither of them knew him.

“Where were you going, sir?” said Jon.

“To the auction at Thingvellir.”

“You are not so far out of your road, then. Bear to the right until you cross the river, and then follow the stones until you come to the Chasm.”

Christian Christiansson hesitated. “I’m tired, having ridden from Reykjavik, and it doesn’t seem much good going farther. Nobody else will be fool enough to travel in weather like this, and without people to bid there can be no auction. So if you can give me shelter and a shake-down——”

“You are welcome to the shelter, sir, but if you want the place you had better go on and get there.”

“Why so?”

“Because it’s a Sheriff’s sale, and he’ll sell in any case.”

“How can he sell if there’s nobody to buy?”

“He’ll bid for somebody himself, sir, and we all know who that is.”

“Who?”

“Somebody at Government House who has wanted the farm these fifteen years.”

“So you think the Sheriff will hold the auction to-morrow morning whether anybody is there or not?”

“Sure to, sir. The fewer there are to bid the better he’ll be pleased, and the bigger the Minister’s bargain.”

“I must go on then, I suppose,” said Christian Christiansson.

“Come in and melt yourself first,” said Jon. “The wind is going down—it will be quiet presently.”

A few minutes later Christian Christiansson was drinking hot coffee in the elt-house, while Jon and Gudrun talked of the family at the Inn-farm.

“We were servants with the family for ten years, so we know them well, sir,” said Jon.

“Poor old Anna!” said Gudrun. “She would be welcome to anything I have, but with the boys growing up we haven’t a bed to spare in the badstofa.”’

“There’s an adopted daughter, isn’t there?”

“There is, sir, and anybody would be glad to have her for a helper, but the master won’t hear of letting her go. ‘Elin shall be servant to nobody,’ he says.”

“It isn’t Magnus Stephenson’s fault if misfortune has overtaken him,” said Jon. “He has the strength of Samson and has done the work of six men.”

“How does he bear his troubles?”

“Badly,” said Gudrun. “He never goes to church now or reads the prayers at home either.”

“Yes,” said Jon, “he has lost his religion, poor fellow, and when a man loses that he loses everything, you know.”

“People are afraid of him,” said Gudrun. “He looks like a man with no luck, and he is always beating his arms about him and driving away the good spirits that walk by a man’s side.”

“And what do people say is the cause of the change in him?”

“The Bank and bad times,” said Jon.

“And a bad brother,” said Gudrun. “His brother is dead and the old mistress has made a saint of him, but she daren’t mention his name before Magnus, or he gets up and goes out of the house.”

“Does he hate him so much then?”

“There was a time when I believe in my heart he would have killed him,” said Jon.

Christian Christiansson started up and prepared to go on to Thingvellir, although his half-frozen limbs would scarcely cross the saddle or his swollen fingers hold the reins. Again his heart had fallen low, and the hope with which he had begun his journey—the hope of a joyful reunion at the end of it—was now gone.

The intensity of Magnus’s feeling made it impossible that he should reveal himself to his people. If he rode up to the door and said, “I am Oscar, the report of my death was false, and I have come back rich and prosperous,” what would Magnus say? He would say, “Your father is dead, your wife is in her grave, your mother and your child have gone through poverty and perhaps want, and all the consequence of your transgressions—do you think that your miserable money will make amends?” And then his brother would fling him back into the road.

Not to-night could he make himself known—not to-night at all events! Perhaps to-morrow, when the sale would be over and the Sheriff gone, and he had smoothed the way and made sure of his welcome! But now he must go to the Inn like any other traveler who had come there to be present at the auction and to bid for the estate.

Seeing his course clear in this way, his heart rose again and he pushed on with a better will. The storm had subsided, and when he came to the sudden mouth of the Almanagja the wind dropped altogether, and it was almost as if some vast volcano in the sky had poured its lava over the earth in snow.

The Chasm itself was full of memories—memories of the day of his triumph, the day of his disgrace—but icicles hung from where the flags of the nations had floated, and drifts of snow, like mighty mushrooms, were lying in the holes where the tents had been. He remembered the witch who had said “Beware of your brother,” and he thought of the white face that had broken in upon the dancing. In the breathless calm the sky came out and it spanned the brant walls like a majestical roof studded with stars, but he stumbled in the darkness on to the frozen surface of the drowning pool, and almost rode up to the spot where he had sat with Helga.

At the bridge that crossed the frozen waterfall he caught his first sight of the lighted windows of the Inn-farm, and then his heart seemed to stand still. His mother, his brother, and his little daughter were there, and he had been ten years preparing to join them, but now that he was so near, he could hardly bring himself to go on.

Would his mother recognize him—she who had read his features first and known him from the cradle up? He was afraid she would, and then, in the tumult of his tossing heart, he was afraid she would not. Nobody in Iceland had known him hitherto, and now he was aware that he was leas like himself than ever, for, seeing his face in a glass as he came out of Korastead, he saw that his lips were swollen and his eyes bloodshot with the heavy labor of that awful day.

He had crunched through the broken ice of the river below the bridge and reached the silent snow of the pathway to the farm, when the door opened and two men came out of the house. “The Sheriff and the Pastor,” he thought. He drew rein and they did not hear him, but when they had taken the path to the Parsonage, the dogs inside began to bark.

The palpitation of his heart was almost choking him, and it would have taken little to make him turn about and fly. How long he stood there—whether five minutes or ten—he never rightly knew. A hundred thoughts, more wild than the whirling snow, were tossing within his brain. But thinking at length that Almighty God who had brought him through the perils of that fearful day—defeating the designs of the devil and of the elements, and driving him before His mighty will as before a greater hurricane—could not have led him there at last to any end save a good one, he urged his horse to the foot of the steps and raised his whip to the window.

X

Magnus Stephenson had indeed lost his religion. For fifteen years he had believed with all the strength of his soul that everybody in this life was treated according to his deserts; that if you did right you were rewarded sooner or later, and if you did wrong you were punished. But experience of the world had little by little, and year by year, inflicted upon his profound faith in the rule of conscience the most inexplicable contradictions. The man who lived a good life was not being rewarded, and the man who lived an evil one was not being punished. What, then, was there left to believe? That there was no God in the universe at all, or that if there were a God He did nothing!

Magnus Stephenson had tried to do what was right. He had taken up the burdens which others laid down and he had struggled on with a strong heart. For fifteen years he had labored like a slave, and though his arrears of debt constantly accumulated, he had never allowed himself to believe that the end was coming on. The mortgage was monstrous, the interest was exorbitant, and the Bank would come to see that more than he got out of the land and stock it was impossible for man to make!

But the deed of execution had been served on him at length, the advertisements of the sale had been published, and the two preliminary auctions had been held. Then, as if in a moment, the man’s religion had disappeared and his soul had sent up that sublime if blasphemous cry, which since the beginning of the world has borne to heaven the lamentation and protest of humanity against the misery of man: “I have obeyed Your laws; I have lived a good life; I have assisted the poor and helped the oppressed; I have shared my bread with the orphan and protected the widow—what have You done for me?”

In the grim silence which follows that ghastly question, it is more than a man’s religion that disappears, and Magnus Stephenson’s belief in right and wrong, his faith in justice, in conscience, and in virtue had gone down together, leaving nothing but the fierce convulsions of his animal nature.

From the moment the Sheriff arrived to make the inventory he had done little but sit in the hall and drink. He sat there all day long, with his coarse snow-stockings over his boots, his sullen face to the stove, his hands deep in his trouser pockets, his broad forehead heavily wrinkled under the rough stubble of his iron-grey hair, his massive jaw resting on his breast, and his mighty loins making the chair creak as he moved and turned.

At intervals during the day his mother tried to comfort him.

“Don’t be too downhearted, Magnus,” said Anna. “The stars shine when it is dark, you know.”

“Isn’t it dark enough yet?” said Magnus, and he laughed bitterly and drank again.

At intervals Elin came to him also. She was a tall girl now, nearly sixteen years of age, with a whisper of womanhood in her face and form, but coming in her short blue skirt and buckled shoes she would slide into a seat on Magnus’s knee and, slipping one arm about his neck, put the other hand on his hot forehead, and try to soothe him in her motherly little way.

But “There, there! That will do. Go to your grandmother. I’m tired,” he would say.

Early in the day he had been tormented by thoughts of the travelers who might come from a distance to stay over-night in order to be present at the auction, and in his mind’s eye he saw the Inn-farm full of them, with their indifferent talk and heartless laughter, and himself in his impotent rage itching with a desire to fling them into the road. But when the storm broke his fears on that head were appeased, and while the wind and snow wailed and wept about the house he sat for hours alone in a gloomy and tragic pence.

Besides the Sheriff, the only person who visited the house that day was the Pastor, and he came as late as ten at night to take the Sheriff back to lodge with him. By that time all that was left of the broken household had gathered in the hall, where Magnus still sat before the stove, while the Sheriff, with Anna and Elin, stood by the dresser making an end of the inventory.

“Ugh! What a night!” said the Pastor, stamping the snow off his stockings. “You’re not likely to be brought out of bed by travelers on a night like this—that’s some consolation, isn’t it?”

He was a garrulous old man, with a shallow heart and a shallow head, who chewed the cud of his humdrum livelihood with content on his stipend of fifty pounds a year.

“So this is to be your last night in the old home, Anna! What a pity! Well,” tapping his snuff-box, “naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither! Blessed be the name of the Lord!”

Magnus moved his chair impatiently and made contemptuous noises in his throat.

“I’ve known the old house through all its days of joy and sorrow for forty-five years, Anna. Ever since your poor father that’s dead—I buried him myself, God rest his soul!——”

“God rest his soul,” said Anna.

“Ever since the day he gave you away as a bride. And a nervous, blushing, tender-hearted little bride you were, too!”

Again Magnus shuffled in his chair and made noises in his throat.

“I remember it so well because it was the same year that your father’s big barn was burnt down, and his cousin Jorgen was found dead in the Chasm. What a sensation that made! What inquiries! What examining witnesses! Your predecessor had something on his hands in those days, Sheriff.”

The Sheriff muttered some commonplace and Magnus kicked at the smouldering wood in the stove.

“Suspicion actually fell upon your father, you remember, and because he had been drinking and was such an ungovernable man when he was drunk——”

“Oh, for the Lord’s sake let’s have done with this,” cried Magnus.

“Magnus Stephenson,” protested the Pastor, “if we are in trouble let us behave like God’s rational creatures——”

“Rational hell!” growled Magnus, whereupon the Sheriff, to avoid further friction, closed his book with a bang, saying he had finished and was ready to go.

Magnus sat quiet while the Sheriff—a sharp-featured man with the eyes of a ferret—put on his snow-shoes and cloak, and then with a tremor in his voice and a somber fire in his eyes he turned and said:

“Is it all over, sir?”

“Yes; it was a long job, but it’s over at last,” said the Sheriff.

“I mean,” said Magnus, “is it certain that the auction must take place?”

“Quite certain. There has never been any doubt of it that I know of.”

“Look here, sir,” said Magnus, heaving up to his feet. “A Sheriff can do a good deal if he cares to use his influence. Give me another chance, and you shall have everything I owe. I’ve had five bad years in succession—no wonder I fell into arrears. Last spring I lost forty lambs in a single night, and next morning two heifers and a calf. The floods came in the autumn, too. And half my hay was swept into the lake. But weather like that can’t last forever. We are sure to have a run of good years next. Give me four years more, sir—and you shall see what I can do.”

“The thing is past praying for,” said the Sheriff.

“Don’t say that, sir. Listen! My people have farmed this place for a hundred and fifty years, and a man doesn’t like to be the one to lose it. My own flesh and blood are in the land too—the strength of my muscles and the sweat of my brow. Give me three years more, sir—just three.”

“Impossible!” said the Sheriff.

“Sheriff, come this way,” said Magnus, drawing the man aside by the arm and speaking in a low voice, so that the women might not hear. “I don’t care a straw about myself I’ll get along somehow, and if I don’t it doesn’t matter—but there’s the child. She ought to inherit the farm, and she’s an orphan, but she’ll get nothing. Give me a chance for the child’s sake, Sheriff. Don’t be hard on me. Sell up half my stock to pay part of the interest and let me have two years more—only two.”

“You know quite well that the mortgage is on the loose property as well as the land,” said the Sheriff. “How can I sap away the security? As for the girl, she’s young and strong; let her go into service.”

Magnus bit his lip in an effort to control himself, and then he said, “You are quite right, sir; the girl and I can take care of ourselves, but there’s the old mother. She was born in this house and she expected to die here. I shouldn’t so much mind if she were gone, and to tell you the truth she’s not well now, sir. Give me one more year, Sheriff—one single year.”

“It’s no use wasting words,” said the Sheriff. “Matters have gone too far. The only thing I can do now is——”

“What, sir?”

“If you can pay me the whole of the interest before nine o’clock to-morrow morning I can stop the sale on my own responsibility.”

“Eight thousand crowns!” said Magnus, raising his voice to a cry of derision; “you ask me to find you eight thousand crowns before nine o’clock to-morrow morning? You might as well ask me to find you the moon!”

“Then let us say no more on the subject. The Bank has been very patient, very indulgent——”

“The Bank!” cried Magnus, in the wild defiance of his despair. “Has the Bank got a mother? Has the Bank got a child? No! The Bank is a great, grinding monster without bowels of compassion for anybody. God damn the Bank and all its fools and flunkeys!”

“Magnus Stephenson,” said the Pastor, raising his little fat hand, “I will ask you to remember that a clergyman is in your company, and if you take God’s name in vain——”

“Take God’s name in vain! You do that often enough—you do it every Sunday.”

“I’ll not pretend to misunderstand you, Magnus Stephenson, for I know you are deeply tainted with skepticism, and since you ceased to come to church——”

“Church! You pray to God in your churches, and what does He do for you? What does He do for any one? What has He done for me?”

“If your life had been straight and pure God would have watched over you.”

“And hasn’t it? Haven’t I tried to do what was right? And yet God is seeing me sold up and turned out, and my dear ones left to die in a ditch.”

“God chastises His own, and if we only have faith in Him——”

“Faith in Him? Where is He? Is He in the Northlands? I have never heard of it. Is He in the Southlands? I’ve never seen Him here, though I’ve seen the devil often enough. He’s in the clouds if He’s anywhere, and that’s no use to me.”

“Magnus Stephenson——”

“If God is on the earth let Him do something. Here’s His chance. You call the poor His people, don’t you? Well, I’ve fed and sheltered His people for fifteen years, and now I want feeding and sheltering myself. I want eight thousand crowns before nine o’clock to-morrow morning, and if God can do anything in the world let him find me the money and save my mother and my child from starvation. But He can’t do it! He can do nothing!”

“Magnus Stephenson,” said the little clergyman, raising his little fat hand again, “when you come to stand before the great white throne God will have something to forgive you.”

“Pastor Peter, when I come to stand before the great white throne I shall have something to forgive God, it seems to me.”

“Blasphemy! Blasphemy!” cried the Pastor, and as he followed the Sheriff out of the house Magnus sent a ringing laugh of contempt after him into the darkness of the night. At the same moment two sheep-dogs that had been lying at the door with their snouts on their paws, as if anxious to join the uproar, began to growl and bark, whereupon Magnus (who had always been a lover of animals) kicked them savagely and then reeled back to his seat by the stove.

The strangers being gone and the little family alone, Elin, who had been standing by the dresser, went over to Magnus and slid into her seat on his knee and said:

“You must not think about me, Uncle Magnus. Wherever you have to go I will go too, and what is good enough for you is good enough for Elin. And then, who knows what may happen before the Sheriff comes back in the morning? This is New Year’s Eve, you know. All good things come at New Year—miracles come at New Year, Uncle.”

But the sweet buoyancy of her girlish spirits, which had been the sunshine of his life for so many years, was failing him at last, and putting her aside with petulant expressions he got up and went out to the back.

Then Anna, who had been sitting in silence by the table, took the Bible and four hymn-books from the corner cupboard and rang the bell for prayers.

“I wonder why I did that?” she said. “I forgot that Eric was gone. I hope he found shelter somewhere, poor boy—I should pity a dog that had to be out of doors on a night like this.”

And then Elin, in default of Magnus, read the lesson which Anna had marked for her. It was the psalm beginning, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.” And when the short chapter was finished the two women stood up and sang a hymn—Elin in the silvery treble of youth and Anna in the husky tones of age, they two only in the lonely house among the solitary hills, with nothing about them but the darkness and the snow—nothing but that and the immeasurable wings of God.

“Happy the man whose tender care
Relieves the poor distressed;
When he by trouble’s compassed round
The Lord will give him rest.”

Anna sat down when the hymn was ended, but Elin continued to stand by the table, and closing her eyes with her innocent face uplifted, she said a little prayer for herself.

“O Father,” she said, “bless Uncle Magnus, so that he may fear no evil. Show me how to help him, so that I may not be a burden and a care. Dear Jesus, send the miracle that will save Uncle Magnus and grandma and me. It will be such a little thing to you, but such a great, great thing to us, and we shall all be so happy and dwell in the house of the Lord forever. For Christ’s sake. Amen.”

Then she opened her trustful eyes and said, “I’m sure He will, grandma,” and kissing Anna she said “Good night” in a cheery voice and went off to bed.

Prayers being over, Magnus returned to the hall and began to rake out the stove for the night. The clouds hung heavier on him than ever, and thinking to banish them Anna talked of Elin.

“She grows more and more like her mother, and sometimes I think it can only be a dream that our dear Thora is dead. If you had heard her praying for the miracle it would have filled your heart brimful. She has gone to bed quite certain that the miracle will come before morning.”

“It would have to be a miracle to help us now, mother,” said Magnus. “And miracles don’t happen—except such of them as we make for ourselves.”

“What do you mean by that, Magnus?” said Anna, lighting the candles.

“I mean—if I had to live my life over again, I shouldn’t try to do what is right, mother.”

“You wouldn’t do what is wrong, would you?”

“There is no wrong and no right, mother; there is only what is best, and if I had to begin over again, I should do what was best—best for myself and for the people about me.”

“You don’t know what you are saying, Magnus. There are moments when it might seem to be best to rob, even to kill——”

“And why not?” said Magnus—he was bolting the door. “If a man came to this house to-night with eight thousand crowns in his pocket, do you think I should hesitate to take them?”

“My son, you don’t mean it.”

“I do!”

“You are driven to despair, Magnus, and a despairing man’s words belong to the wind. If I thought you meant it I should die—I should die this very minute.”

She was crying and there was silence for a moment, and then Magnus said:

“Never mind, mother. It doesn’t matter whether I meant it or not, the temptation isn’t likely to come to me. Give me the candle and let us go to bed.”

“You have borne a terrible burden, Magnus, and if I could only have helped you to bear it——”

“You have, mother. If it had not been for you and Elin I should have gone under ten years ago.”

“Your father knew he had robbed you of your inheritance, and perhaps that helped to kill him in the end.”

“It wasn’t father’s fault altogether. He tried to do what was right, too. But the poor wretch who comes after the prodigal gleans in a barren field, you know.”

With their candles in hand they were turning to go—Anna to the badstofa above, and Magnus to the guest-room off the hall—when the dogs, who had risen again, and were snuffling at the bottom of the door, began to growl and bark.

“There’s somebody coming,” said Magnus.

A moment later there was a sharp knock at the window, as with a metal end of a riding-whip, and a tremulous, high-pitched voice outside, making the customary Icelandic salutation, “God be with you!”

They looked at each other in blank surprise, while backward thoughts galloped through their minds, and then Magnus, forgetting to give the customary reply, walked back to the door, and threw it open.

There was a dull thud of heavy feet on the outside steps, and at the next moment a man stood on the threshold. He seemed to be an old man, for his eyebrows, beard, and mustache, and as much as could be seen of his hair under the peaked hood of his ulster, were white with snow. One moment he stood there as if breathless after his journey, looking from Magnus to the mother, and from the mother to Magnus. Then he said, in the same tremulous voice as before:

“Can I have a bed here to-night, and shelter for my horse?”

It seemed to Anna that he spoke to her, but instead of answering immediately, she looked across at Magnus with helpless eyes that were full of inexpressible fears. Magnus looked back at his mother and hesitated for an instant, while he held the door open with his hand. Then:

“Come in, sir,” he said, and the stranger stepped into the house.