The Prodigal Son

Part VII

“The ball no question makes of ayes and noes,
But right or left, as strikes the player goes;
And He who tossed you down into the field,
He knows about it all—He knows—HE knows.”

I

“The little mare is hot—she’ll want a rub down and a rest before you give her a feed.”

“I’ll see to that, sir,” said Magnus, and he went out and pulled the door after him.

Christian Christiansson had taken two paces into the hall, and was standing there like a man who is dazed. His heart was thumping against his ribs, and his pulse was beating violently, and he felt that he would fall if he took another step forward. So often had he pictured himself in that place that he could not at first believe in the reality. Coming out of the darkness, the light of the candles dazzled him, but he looked round the room, trying to remember. At one glance he took in everything—the old portraits on the wall, the old Bornholme clock in the corner, the stove and the armchair in front of it—and, fresh from the warm comfort of Government House, the Inn-farm seemed bare and bleak. This sent a chill pang of remorse to his mind, and the pain of conscience increased when he looked at his mother.

Her hair was white that had once been dark, and her face, which had been full of the loveliness of love and the beauty of happiness, was scored deep with lines of suffering. His heart yearned over her, and notwithstanding his determination not to reveal his identity until morning, it was as much as he could do to restrain himself from saying as well as he could for the emotion that was mastering him, “Mother, don’t you know me? I am Oscar,” and then throwing his arms about her dear neck as he had always meant to do.

Meantime Anna, who had recovered her self-control and was lighting the lamp that swung from the ceiling, glanced across at the new-comer and thought, “He’s nearly frozen stiff, and no wonder.” With that thought she bustled about to rekindle the stove, and called on him to remove his snow-covered clothing.

“Won’t you take off your cloak and boots, sir?” she said, and though the question was so commonplace he could not answer immediately, for his voice would not come.

“Your cloak and boots, sir, and I’ll put them to dry by the stove.”

“Ah yes, of course, certainly.”

She stood by him while he threw off his ulster and shook the snow from his hair and beard, emerging a younger and stronger man, but she only thought, “A stranger, I suppose. Why does he travel in this weather?”

When he had pulled off his riding-boots, she brought him a pair of Magnus’s slippers and said:

“You must have had a terrible ride, sir.”

“It was pretty bad certainly,” he said, and after that he got on better.

“A gentleman must have been anxious to get on with his journey to travel on a day like this.”

“I was—I had something to do at the end of it.”

“Have you come far, sir?”

“Altogether? Yes, very far.”

“From Reykjavik perhaps?”

“Farther than that—from England.”

“From England!”

“From London.”

As he stooped to put on the slippers he thought his mother was looking at him, and he trembled between fear and hope of being recognized.

“I suppose,” he said—his head was down—“I suppose you’ve never been as far as that, landlady?”

“No, sir.”

“Nor any of your family?”

He could not resist the temptation to say this, but his mother did not seem to hear him—she was on her knees, breaking sticks into the stove.

“Sit up and warm yourself, sir. My son raked out the fire, but these sticks will burn presently. You are here on business, I suppose?”

“Yes, I’m here on business.”

Anna thought of the auction and waited for the stranger to speak of it. When he did not do so she said, “Travelers come from England to buy sheep and ponies, but they don’t often come in the winter, sir.”

Still he did not speak (he was thinking of Elin and looking round for any trace of her), and rising from the stove Anna said:

“But you’ll be hungry after your long ride—what can I give you to eat?”

“Anything at all—anything you have ready.”

“I’m afraid I have nothing ready—that is to say, nothing that is good enough for the like of you, sir.”

As soon as he could find his voice after that he said, “Don’t you always keep smoked mutton in an Iceland house?”

“Well, yes, if that will do, sir.”

“I should like it above all things.”

There was a moment’s silence, and he thought his mother was looking at him again. “Then perhaps you are an Icelander?” she said.

“Yes, I’m an Icelander,” he answered.

“What is your name?”

Another wild impulse to reveal himself immediately to his mother, nearly swept down his fears, for he was choking with a sense of duplicity and his conscience was fighting in contrary ways, but after a moment his prudence conquered, and with a gulp in his throat he said:

“They call me Christian Christiansson.”

“Well, it’s lucky you found us up, sir. We were on the point of going to bed.”

“I suppose the other members of your family are gone already?”

“There’s only one besides what you’ve seen—my granddaughter—and she had just gone off as you came in, sir.”

He looked at her as she was crossing in front of him, and saw that she was wearing the brooch which he had given her when he came back from Oxford. That sent all the blood to his head again, and he was saying, before he was aware of it—

“Do you know, landlady, I’ve slept in this house before?”

“It must have been a long time ago then—I don’t remember you.”

“It was a long time ago. That,” pointing to the portrait of Anna on the wall, “that is a portrait of yourself, isn’t it?”

“It used to be, but I was younger when it was like me, sir.”

A sudden softening came into his voice as he replied, “It was exactly like you when I saw you last, landlady.”

“Then you’ve not been here for ten years at least, sir.”

“Quite ten years,” he answered. “And that,” pointing to the portrait of the Governor, “is a portrait of your husband.”

“It must be more than ten years since you were here, sir, for my husband is more than twelve years in his grave.”

“It is more than ten years. In fact it is sixteen years—nearly sixteen.”

She looked fixedly at him for a moment and something in her memory seemed to stir, for her bosom heaved perceptibly, but she only said, with a deep sigh, “We’ve seen trouble since you traveled in these parts before, sir.”

“Ah, yes, I’ve heard of it—I heard of it in Reykjavik. You had a son——”

“That was my son who opened the door to you.”

“But you had another son—a younger son.”

“Yes, but—we never talk of him now, sir.”

“Who’s portrait is that in your brooch, landlady?”

“It’s his—he is dead.”

“Died in disgrace, didn’t he?”

“Who knows that, sir? Man sees the deed, they say, but God the circumstance.”

“They think hard things of him in Reykjavik, though. They say he robbed his father of every penny when he went away, and never sent anything home toward the maintenance of his child.”

“It needs no skill to wound the defenceless,” said Anna, bridling up. “The father robbed himself to save his son, if you want to know the truth, and as for never sending anything home for the child the poor boy had nothing to send, for he was poor himself, sir.”

“So you found that out, did you?”

“After he was dead we did—one of his father’s English friends wrote to tell us so. And all the time he had been writing letters to me to say how busy he was and how well he was succeeding—just to keep up my heart and save me from fretting.”

The mother’s lingering fondness for her prodigal was rising in her eyes and breaking in her voice and she was trying to turn away, but he could not let her go.

“What a pity his father didn’t live long enough to hear that! It would have softened his heart toward him, perhaps.”

“It didn’t need softening, sir—not at the end at all events.”

“His father forgave him, did he?”

“He died thinking his son had become a great man and had justified all his hopes and atoned for everything. It was only a delusion, sir, but it made him very happy.”

“Your son was a musician, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, sir, and from the time he was a child he used to scribble things and call them his compositions. The pieces of paper always disappeared and I never knew what had become of them, but when his father was lying dead I found out where they were.”

“And where were they?”

“In his poor father’s hands.”

Christian Christiansson had gone on and on, while the hot blood throbbed in his brain, struggling between the desire to reveal himself and the fear of doing so, but he was drawn up at last by a stifling sense of his own unworthiness, and before he knew what he was doing he said:

“The man who could do wrong to a father who loved him like that must have been a scoundrel—a bad-hearted scoundrel, and he deserved everything that happened to him.”

“He was nothing of the kind, sir,” said Anna. “He may have done wrong—I’m not defending him—but a better-hearted boy was never born into the world. Everybody loved him, and he loved everybody, and as for me——”

Christian Christiansson recovered himself at the sound of Anna’s faltering words. “God bless her!” he thought, and his heart danced to a new song, but he only said, with a perceptible lowering of his voice, “I beg your pardon! Naturally his mother cannot think so, but this is the first time I’ve heard a good word for him since I came to Iceland.”

“I hadn’t meant to speak of him at all, sir. I never do when my other son is near—Hush! He is coming back.”

But the noise which they heard behind them was that of the opening and closing of a bedroom not a kitchen door, and it was followed by the light footstep of a girl, whereupon Anna said:

“Elin! I thought you were in bed and asleep, my child.”

“I was, but I awoke and heard you had a visitor, so I got up to help, grandma.”

Christian Christiansson trembled from head to foot. The silvery voice at his back seemed to come to him from across a wide abyss—for it was a familiar voice but vague as with the mist of dreams and dim as with the clouds of night.

“This is my granddaughter, sir,” said Anna. And then Christian Christiansson turned and saw her—a young girl as tall as a woman, with fair complexion, a soft smiling face, and beautiful blue eyes. She wore a laced bodice, a turned-down collar, a hufa, a tassel, plaited hair, and looked like the living picture of what her mother had been when he came from college.

It was his daughter, his little Elin, whom he had traveled so far to see, but it seemed to him as if all the cruel years had rolled back in a moment, and it was Thora returned to life.

II

“Well, now that you are here, you had better lay the table,” said Anna.

“Yes, grandma,” said the girl.

“Put on the smoked mutton and the Rullapilsa and the Rikling, while I go to the elt-house to make coffee.”

“Yes, grandma.”

“Make yourself at home, Christian Christiansson—my granddaughter will wait on you.”

“I will,” he tried to say, but his voice would scarcely come.

Anna being gone, he sat for some moments looking at Elin while she tripped from dresser to table, and in and out of the pantry, spreading the cloth, and laying the plates and the food. The girl was so simple, so natural, so free from self-consciousness, that she seemed to be hardly aware of his presence, for she hummed to herself softly as if some song-bird in her breast could not be kept quite still. His heart swelled and throbbed as his eyes followed her about, and when she left the room the light seemed to fail in it, and when she came back the air seemed to become warm. In the dizzy happiness of that hour he felt as if he had lost a daughter in every one of the fifteen years he had lived without her, and now that she was near, so close, his hands burned and itched to hold her. He wanted to take her in his arms and say, “My child! My child! Doesn’t something tell you who I am? I am your father, and I have wanted you so much and thought of you so often, and now I have come to fetch you and we shall never be parted again!” But between fear of frightening her and dread of disclosing himself, all he could do was to conquer the fluttering in his throat and say:

“Your name is Elin, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir,” said the girl.

“What a beautiful name it is, too—Eleen! Your father chose it, didn’t he?”

“I have never heard that, sir. Did grandmother say so?”

“Grandmother and I,” he stammered, “have been talking of your father. You don’t remember him?”

“Oh no, sir—he died when I was quite little.”

“What a loss that must have been to you, my child!”

“I can’t say that, sir,” said the girl, “because, you see, Uncle Magnus has been the same as a father to me all my life, and I have never known any difference.”

“What a loss to your father himself then! How happy you would have made him, and how proud he would have been of you!”

“I can’t say that either,” said the girl again, “because he lived five years after I was born, and it seems he never took any notice of me.”

“Did grandmother tell you so?”

“Oh no, sir. Indeed no! Nor Uncle Magnus neither. But everybody know all about my father, and even the girls at school knew that.”

A feeling of mortal shame came over him, and the warm pulsing place in his breast grew still and cold.

“So you are not sorry your father is dead, Elin?”

“It wouldn’t be right to say that, sir.”

“At all events you feel no love for him?”

“I never knew him—you can’t love somebody you never knew, can you? Perhaps if he had lived longer and returned home I might have come to love him. But I don’t see how I could if what people say about him is true.”

“What do they say, my child?”

“They say he was unkind to my mother, and that that was one of the reasons why she died so early.”

“Then you never wish you could have seen and known your father?”

“How can I? If he wasn’t good to my poor mother, why should I think he would have been good to me? But see, your supper is ready. Grandma will bring the coffee presently; won’t you begin with the meat, sir?”

He sat down to the table but his hunger was gone. For a moment he almost wished himself back in the black night from which he had come. The girl’s simple words had been ringing the death-knell of his expectations. He had left her all these years to the keeping and care of others—could he expect to come back now and find the affection he had forfeited? Ah no! He had come too late—too late! But just as one part of the plan he had formed for himself was becoming vague and shadowy a gleam of new light was shot into his brain, and his heart rose with a bound.

“Didn’t grandma call you Christian Christiansson?” asked the girl.

“Yes,” he answered. “Ever hear that name before, my child?”

The girl turned to him with a face glowing with excitement and said, “Everybody in Iceland has heard it, sir. It is the same as the name of the great composer who lives in England.”

A deafening tumult of joy was rising within him, and he said, “So you—you have heard of him, have you?”

“I sing his songs, sir. They are beautiful! I think they are the most beautiful songs in the world. Would you like me to sing one of them while you eat your supper?”

“Will you?”

“I should like to,” she said, and before he could catch the breath which had been suspended she had slipped off like a shaft of moonlight and was back like a ray of the sun, bringing a guitar in her hands.

“This was my mother’s guitar, and now it’s mine, and it’s such a good one,” she said, and with the utter freedom from self-consciousness which is the charm of children she sat and began to play. After a moment she stopped, with her head aside, and said:

“Which should it be, I wonder? But perhaps you know them all and would like me to sing something in particular?”

His face was down, the waves of emotion were surging through and through him. “Sing—sing anything you like, my darling,” he replied.

The fluttered earnestness of his words startled her for a moment, but she only smiled with a new sweetness and began to sing, first in low, clear half-tones, and then in a high, tremulous treble that was like the peal of a lark at the gate of heaven.

Christian Christiansson could not eat; he could only rest his elbows on the table and cover his face with his hand. His own child was singing his own song to him in a voice that was like her mother’s voice and like his own voice too!

When the song was done she turned to him again with eyes shining with unshed tears and said, “Isn’t that beautiful?”

“It was beautifully sung, my child, beautifully!” he said. And then, after a moment, “Elin, would you like to hear something of the man who wrote that song and how he came to write it?”

Elin’s eagerness was heart-breaking. “Indeed, indeed I should,” she said. “Do you know your namesake then?”

“I have known him all his life, my child.”

“Tell me about him. Oh, do tell me. One who has such beautiful thoughts and feelings must be so good and noble.”

“He is neither the one nor the other, Elin, but only a poor wayward sinner like ourselves. In early life he did wrong by his young wife and she died. Then he did wrong by his father and he had to fly from his country. After that he went through many sufferings and was guilty of many sins, but he came to himself at the end, and then he remembered a little daughter whom he had left behind him. He wished to return to her immediately, and be a father to her at last, and make it up to her for all that he had done amiss to her mother who was dead. But there were many things to do first, for he was like one who was buried under an avalanche which he had brought down on himself, and he had to work his way back to life and the world. So when he was far away and his heart was hungry for the love of his little girl, and he didn’t know what was happening to her, and he wanted so much—oh so much—to go to her, but could not do so yet because he had sinned and must pay his penalty, he wrote that song, and it was the cry of his soul to the mother in heaven to comfort and care for their child on earth.”

As Elin listened to the story of Christian Christiansson the tears which had been standing in her eyes rolled down her cheeks, and her bosom under her laced bodice slowly rose and as slowly fell again.

“How beautiful!” she said. And seeing how much she was moved by the sorrows of the man who was not her father, the new light came to him and he asked himself why, if she could not care for him in his true character, she should not love him as Christian Christiansson.

There was a shadowy ghost of pain in that thought too, but he put it aside. After years of hope and heavy labor he had come home to claim his child, and what he had dreaded had come to pass—her heart had been poisoned against him. But while she loathed him as Oscar Stephenson she loved him as Christian Christiansson! Oh, beautiful, blind, pathetic fallacy, could he not let it be?

In a tumult of heart and brain that was like a whirlpool in a dark river, he had risen to go to the girl, hardly knowing what he was to do or say, when Anna came back with a smoking coffee-pot in her hand, saying in a cheery voice:

“Here it is at last! The fire had gone out in the elt-house, and I had work enough to kindle it.”

And then, having both in the room at one moment—his mother and his daughter—his feelings almost mastered him again, and he had as much as he could do to keep himself from blurting out everything and so being done with further torture. But just as the words of his confession were trembling on his lips he thought, “Not to-night; to-morrow morning; and then what joy, what happiness!”

Almost at the same moment Magnus returned to the house and said, “The little mare was nearly done, sir, but I’ve rubbed her down and given her hay, and she shall have a mash before I go to bed.”

“Let us have a bottle of brandy first,” said Christian Christiansson, and a few minutes later Elin was carrying away the dishes to wash them, Anna was going into Magnus’s bedroom to make it ready for the guest, and the two brothers were sitting at opposite sides of the table with the bottle between them.

III

They were less like each other now than ever before—the elder with his matted, black beard, his strong features, and the vertical lines in his low brow under the upright stubble of his iron-grey hair; the younger with his luminous brown eyes and delicate face, his full round forehead, and his thin, silken, light hair brushed backward to the crown.

Christian Christiansson was quivering to the core at this first encounter with the brother whom he had wronged and ruined, but he tried to bear himself bravely and to see how safe it would be to reveal his identity when the time came to do so.

“It’s good of you to give up your room to me,” he began.

“That’s nothing—nothing at all,” said Magnus.

“And perhaps you ought to know why I’m here to-night.”

“Please yourself, sir—please yourself.”

“To tell you the truth, then, I’m here to attend the auction to-morrow morning. I only heard of it in Reykjavik yesterday, having arrived by the ‘Laura’ the day before.”

“So that was the business that brought you, sir?”

“It was. I’ve been abroad for fifteen years, and I’ve made some money, and now I’ve come home to invest it. So knowing this was a good farm——”

“None better in Iceland, sir, if it only had a chance, and if you can afford to buy it out and out——”

“I think I can—I’ve money enough in my pocket at this moment to buy the place to-morrow and leave some for something else. I’m sorry for you, though, and if it’s painful to you to hear me talk like this——”

Magnus, who had been rolling in his chair like a man whose mind as well as his body was uneasy, began to laugh immoderately. “Not at all, sir! Not at all!” he said, filling his glass. “It’s pleasant to hear of anybody having more money than he wants. For my part, I’ve never had enough to pay my debts, sir. For sixteen years I’ve been ploughing the waves and now,” raising his glass and draining it, “I’m reaping the breakers, b—— them!”

Christian Christiansson trembled to his very heart at the sound of Magnus’s laughter—the bitter laughter of rebellion and despair—but he tried to cover up his fear and to carry it off with a cheery tone.

“Don’t be too depressed,” he said. “Nobody knows what the future has in store for him. It’s a pretty dark night outside, but all the same the sun will rise to-morrow morning. Besides, there’s always a sunny side to misfortune if we’ll only allow ourselves to see it. Life is sweet, my friend, whatever happens.”

“You think it is, sir?”

“I know it is, so why should we sit down on our little handful of thorns?”

“Because some of us have nothing else to sit upon,” said Magnus, and he laughed again—the same cold, quaking laughter.

Christian Christiansson shuddered, but struggled on. “You think you’ve failed, but I know some that have succeeded who would be glad to change places with you any minute. They’ve got their gold or their fame or both pouring down on them like an avalanche, and nothing to do with it, nobody to share it with—so it is only so much Dead Sea fruit being piled on their backs. You are not like that. Even if you have to lose your land, you’ve got your health, and a good character and a clean conscience, and your dear ones left to you, haven’t you?”

“That’s why!” said Magnus. “You don’t suppose I’m thinking of myself, do you? It’s just because I’ve got my dear ones left to me that this accursed ill-luck is so hard to bear. What’s it to me to have my houses full of lambs, if the floods have come and they are floating on the lake? You talk like a man who has never known misfortune, sir.”

Christian Christiansson felt dizzy. “Perhaps I haven’t—perhaps I have,” he said in a faint voice, “but I’ve known despair, and I know that no man can live by that. We can only live by hope—not what is, but what is to be—and if we cannot believe when the clouds are dark, that the world is ruled in righteousness——”

“And is it?” said Magnus. “Does the bad man suffer in this world? Do his sheep die of the rot and his cattle tumble over the rocks, or do they increase faster than anybody else’s? No, sir,” he said, turning away in his seat, “if you’re a rascal ready to rob your own father, the chances are you’ll prosper in this world, but if you’re an honest man trying to do good to everybody, as likely as not you’ll do no good to yourself or to anybody about you.”

The dizziness which had seized Christian Christiansson was increasing every moment, but he said:

“The world has its own way of punishing offenders, and even if they escape in life, death is always waiting for them——”

“Death?” said Magnus, swinging round in his creaking chair. “Death is a blind, blundering monster who strikes down the young and leaves the old, the happy and leaves the miserable, the innocent and leaves the guilty, the poor helpless betrayed one and leaves the betrayer! We have all seen that, haven’t we? I have, I know that much.”

The heat and flame of Magnus’s husky voice had fallen to a thick whisper that was like a broken sob. Christian Christiansson dared not raise his face, but he tried to say:

“God brings out all things well in the end. I have always found it so. The march of the world may be enveloped in darkness, but it tends toward justice in the long run.”

“What is the long run to me, sir?” said Magnus. “I’m only here for a few years and I want justice now. I want to see the bad man punished in the present, not in some future generation. Justice, you say! The sins of the fathers visited on the children—that’s the only justice I see in this world. A poor child left penniless because her father gambled or drank the money he didn’t make—do you call that justice, sir? I don’t!”

Magnus’s thick voice was breaking again, and there was silence for a little while.

“No, no, sir! Don’t tell me we get our deserts in this world—any of us—good or bad. Life gives the lie to that old story—always has, always will do. If you are a cheat or a profligate, or a prodigal, you may live in luxury and travel as far as the sun, but if you are a poor devil staying at home and working your fingers to the bone you’ll get thrown out into the road. But what’s the good of talking? The evil day is coming. Let it come!”

Never before had Christian Christiansson felt so little and so mean. The sources of pride were dry in him and he was brought very low in his own esteem. In the presence of the brother who had borne his burdens and broken down under them he saw himself as an abject and pitiful thing. He could not raise his head, for he felt as if his shame were written on his forehead, but he struggled to say something, and the only words that came to him seemed to scorch his tongue and parch his throat.

“I can not dispute with you,” he said. “You’ve suffered more than I have, and no doubt your present troubles are the legacy that was left to you by the prodigal brother your mother was talking about.”

Magnus’s manner changed instantly at the mention of his mother. “She was talking about him again, was she?” he said.

“Does she often talk of him then?”

“Too often, and she seems to think of nothing else. He was the foundation she built her house upon, poor soul, and it fell, but she holds to him all the same.”

“God bless her!” said Christian Christiansson involuntarily. “God bless all women, I say. They’re always on the side of the sinners and the sufferers. They’ll get their compensation somewhere—they must,”—he was thinking of to-morrow morning.

“I see no sign of it in this case,” said Magnus. “She was the best mother to him a man ever had, and he knew it, but he repaid her with neglect and contempt.”

“Contempt?”

“What else would you call it? He lived five years abroad and wrote to her only once in all that time. Yet every night she used to stand outside the door until the post passed, winter and summer, dry or fine, waiting for the letter that never came.”

Christian Christiansson felt as if his very soul were shriveling up with shame.

“She forgave him for that, though, and when he died—you know how he died, everybody knows it—she thought that all he had been trying to do when he fell into that foul dishonor was to get money enough to come back home and make amends.”

“She thought that, did she?”

“She still thinks it.”

Christian Christiansson had a sense of hysterical oppression at his heart. Again he wanted to tell all, and he dared not. “But if it had been true,” he said—“I don’t say it was, but if it had been—if your brother had really been trying for years to make money solely in order to wipe out the debts he had left behind him—if he had come home with the fortune in his hands——”

Magnus’s dark face darkened ominously, and bringing his great fist down on to the table he said, “There would have been a curse on every coin of it, and I should have flung it in his face.”

Christian Christiansson did not ask him why. He knew too well what Magnus meant. In an instant, by such a flash of the lightning of the mind as must come to the guilty soul on the Day of Judgment, the past of his life lay open before him, and the most awful fact of it stood out with naked vividness—the desecration of his wife’s grave.

It was impossible to plead that this had been only the act of a moment; that he had repented it a thousand times with bitter tears; that he had derived no profit or advantage from it, and had endured for ten years its fearful penalty in the death of his identity. Again and again he had soothed himself with such excuses, but he could not cheat his conscience now. Why was he Christian Christiansson? How had it come to pass that he had two hundred thousand crowns in his pocket and that his works were known all over the world?

All the miserable sophistry and false reasoning which had made him what he was, the owner of fame and fortune, had been riddled through and through by Magnus’s terrible words. All the mocking vanity which had lured him onward to that hour with promises of the great surprise, the great dénouement, when he should say, “See, I am here; I have justified all expectations,” lay stark and dead and cold.

No, he could not reveal himself to his family to-morrow morning. He could not reveal himself at all. Having once become Christian Christiansson, he could never again be known as Oscar Stephenson. Thus did the dead punish him, and the desecration of his wife’s grave had but rendered the vow he made to himself perpetual and registered the oath he made to her in heaven.

Christian Christiansson was feeling as if all the world had gone away from him when Anna came out of the guest-room, saying:

“There, sir! Your room is ready and you can go to bed at any time.”

Magnus got up to go to the elt-house to mix the mash for the pony, and then mother and son were together again.

IV

In the confusion of that heart-quelling moment he was asking himself how he could carry out his plan of rescuing his family from their misfortunes if he could not tell them who he was, and how he could claim his daughter and take her away with him, if he could not say, “I am her father, she is mine,” when chance and a commonplace word—those twin sisters of invention and wisdom—showed him what he was to do.

“I shall want to be awakened early in the morning, landlady, for I suppose the Sheriff will come soon.”

“The Sheriff, sir?”

“I’ve just been telling your son that I intend to bid for your farm at the auction to-morrow morning.”

“So that was what you had to do at the end of your journey?”

“Yes, it was what I had to do, landlady.”

She looked at him for a moment, and then asked, “What can a gentleman like you want with a farm like this?”

He did not reply, so she said, “You can not think of living in such a lonesome place as Thingvellir.”

Still he did not speak, and she said again, “You might let the farm certainly, but it is hungry land, I assure you, and everything depends on how you work it.”

She busied herself about the table as if trying to find something to do. “My son,” she said, “is the only one who has ever been able to work it properly, and if he has got into difficulties at last it wasn’t his fault, for there isn’t a man in Iceland who would have been able to keep his head above water.”

She waited for him to say something, but he gave no sign. “His difficulties are not so very serious, either. Eight thousand crowns arrears of interest—that is all, in sixteen years, sir.”

Again she waited, but he was still silent. “When the Sheriff went off this evening, he said if my son could find the money before nine o’clock to-morrow morning, he wouldn’t go on with the auction.”

Christian Christiansson had rested his head on his hand and seemed to be listening intently.

“If my son could only find somebody to lend him the money——”

There was a ring of appeal in her voice which startled herself, for she stopped, and looking nervously round at the stranger, said:

“I’m sure he would never regret it, sir. Magnus would work his fingers to the bone to repay every penny. He has always been a boy like that, and with better seasons and a little luck——”

It was then that the new scheme came to Christian Christiansson and he covered his face with his hand to think of it, whereupon Anna, mistaking the meaning of the altered gesture, faltered and began again.

“I’m taking a great liberty, sir, but I’m not thinking of myself—I’m thinking of my son. In one sense I’m to blame for all that has happened to him. He doesn’t know it and I daren’t tell him, but I am.”

Christian Christiansson looked up at her.

“It was all my fault that his father took the mortgage.”

“Your fault?”

“Yes, sir. My husband loved the poor boy who is gone, but he was the Governor of Iceland and every eye was on him to see that he kept his own house in order, and but for me he might have let the law take its course. I pleaded and prayed with him, thinking that we ourselves would be the ones to suffer. But I only ruined one son in trying to save the other—and I didn’t save him.”

Christian Christiansson dropped his head, for the waters of bitterness were falling over him in a flood, and Anna, thinking she had touched him, went on more eagerly:

“Then there’s the girl, sir, my granddaughter. You’ve seen her yourself, and you’ll say she doesn’t look like a servant, but if the auction comes off she’ll have to go out to service. They treat girls shamefully in some farmhouses, and my son can not bear the thought of it. Neither can I, for I can’t help thinking of her father. Whatever else he may have been he was a gentleman, and to think of his daughter being a drudge to somebody——”

Anna’s voice was faltering again, but after a moment she went on bravely.

“As for myself, I’m an old woman, and a little misfortune more or less doesn’t matter to me now. My time is short in any case, and I shall be glad to go when I’m called. Most of my loved ones are gone already—my son and my granddaughter are all that are left—and if I could feel that I was leaving them happy and comfortable——”

Christian Christiansson could bear no more. “Landlady,” he said, “I had set my heart on buying the farm—I had a particular reason for wishing to buy it—but instead of doing so I’ll lend your son the money to pay the interest.”

Anna’s eyes opened wide in astonishment, and now that her prayer was answered her breath seemed to be suspended. “You will, sir?” she said.

“I will, on one condition.

“Oh, never mind the condition, let me go and tell him.”

“My condition is that you give me the girl to adopt as my daughter.”

“Ah!”

“I’m a lonely person, too, though I’m not so old as you are, and when I’m in England I haven’t wife or child or mother or brother to share my life with me. The girl’s sweet face would be a great comfort to me there, and I’m ready to pay this interest if you are willing to let her go.”

The light had died out of Anna’s eyes—her head was down.

“I should give you every guarantee that she would be taken care of. I am rich, as men of my class go, and she should want for nothing.”

“But I didn’t think your condition would be like that, sir,” said Anna.

“Why not? Are you thinking of the girl or of yourself, landlady?”

“I am thinking of my son. No man was ever so wrapped up in a child. He has had her nearly all her life, and he is very, very fond of her. When she was little and the snow was deep as it is to-day he used to take her to school on his shoulder, and at night when she was sleepy he would carry her in his arms to bed. If she were his own he could not love her more dearly. It is like fatherhood to him, and he will never be a father now, because——”

Anna hesitated as if trying to say something which she was afraid to say, and then through her gathering tears she blurted out her secret.

“To tell you the truth, sir, he cared for her mother, but gave her up to somebody else and she died, and from that day forward all the best years of his life were wasted in a cruel longing for something to love. Then the child came, and it was almost as if the mother herself had sent her little one to comfort him. She could not love him, for she loved the other one to the last, but the child might, and she has—God bless her, she has!”

Christian Christiansson was wrung to the heart, but he struggled on. “So you think he could not part with the girl even for her own welfare and happiness?”

“I don’t say that, sir; and perhaps if it were put to him properly——”

“Put it yourself, landlady.”

“I daren’t! He might suppose that I was thinking of myself.”

“And if he did, would that be such a serious matter? Can it be nothing to him that his mother will be saved from being homeless if no harm is to come to the girl? And no harm shall come to her—you may take my word for that.”

Anna thought for a moment and then she said, “You would tell us where she is to go, and what she is to do, and how she is to be brought up?”

“Indeed I would.”

“She might write to us constantly and come to see us sometimes, perhaps?”

“Certainly she might.”

“After all, it would just be like going into service.”

“Just.”

“Only she would be a lady, not a servant?”

“Only that.”

“You would be good to her? Something tells me you would. And you would, wouldn’t you?”

“I should be as good to the girl as if—as if I were her own father,” said Christian Christiansson.

Anna dried her eyes and said:

“I don’t know what to say, sir—I really don’t know what to say to you.”

“Say nothing to me—speak to your son, landlady.”

“You will lend him the money to pay the interest immediately?”

“Immediately.”

“Eight thousand crowns—you can find it all by nine o’clock to-morrow morning?”

“See,” said Christian Christiansson, taking the pocketbook out of his breast-pocket, “there’s enough in this purse to pay the interest twenty times over. And I’ll not lend the money to your son—I’ll give it to him if he will give me the girl instead.”

“He will be sorry to part with her, but after all it will be one mouth less to feed, and when I’m gone that will be another, and then perhaps, having no burdens and no embarrassments——”

“Speak to him—he’s here,” said Christian Christiansson, and just at that moment Magnus returned to the hall carrying a wooden bowl of smoking bran.

Then in a low and trembling tone, hardly daring to raise her eyes to his face, Anna told her son of the stranger’s offer, dwelling chiefly on the advantages to himself when Elin would be provided for, and she herself would be under the earth, and he, no longer crippled by grinding debt, would be able to pay his way and win back his lost inheritance. But as she went on her voice faltered, and her words became confused, for he was looking down at her with a lowering brow, and at last she stopped altogether, saying:

“I didn’t mean any harm, Magnus. I only thought——”

“You thought I could sacrifice Elin to save myself, mother,” said Magnus, and at that hard word Anna sank into a chair and sobbed.

Then Magnus turned to Christian Christiansson and said, “I’m much obliged for your offer, sir, but my niece is not for sale.”

With that he was passing out of the house, when Christian Christiansson, who was quivering from head to foot, cried, “Wait!”

“Well?”

“You have decided for yourself fast enough—have you thought of anybody else?”

“Who else is there to think about?”

“Your mother for one. If you refuse my offer and the house is sold over your heads to-morrow morning, what is to become of her?”

Magnus flushed as if an invisible hand had smitten him across the face.

“What is to become of the girl, too—have you thought of that? Have you a right to send her into service—to be a drudge to somebody?”

Magnus was shuddering visibly—even the bowl was trembling in his hands.

“No doubt you are fond of the girl and have been good to her, but if she were your own daughter she would be a separate being, and in a case like this you would have no right to speak for her.”

“Then she shall speak for herself,” said Magnus, and putting the smoking bowl on the table he crossed to the inner door and cried in an agitated voice, “Elin! Elin! Elin!”

In a moment the girl came running into the room with a look of alarm, saying, “What is it? Has anything happened?”

“Listen!” said Magnus, and Christian Christiansson could see that though his voice shook as if his soul were shaken he was trying to speak calmly. “This gentleman,” he said, “has told your grandmother that he wishes to adopt you as a daughter, and he offers to pay my debts if I am willing to let you go.”

“Uncle!” cried the girl.

“I have told him you shall speak for yourself, and so you shall, and whatever you decide to do your grandmother and I will agree to.”

“But, Uncle!”

“Don’t speak yet, my child. It is only fair that you should hear everything. Elin, I am a broken man and I have no longer a home to offer you. After the auction to-morrow morning I don’t know what is to become of grandmother and you and me, or where we are to go or what roof is to cover us. But this gentleman is rich, and he promises to provide for you all your life, and to give you all you need and everything you could wish for. If you stay with me you may suffer privations, but if you go to him you will never know a poor day again as long as you live.”

His deep voice had all it could do to support itself, but he bore up to the end, and then Anna, whose eyes were filling as fast as she could wipe them, said:

“Isn’t it wonderful, Elin? Isn’t it like a miracle? Like an answer to your prayer, my child, just when we were so low and downhearted? The gentleman will satisfy us that you are going to a good Christian home and that you will be properly brought up and cared for.”

And then Christian Christiansson himself, though he could scarcely speak for the contending emotions that shook Him to the soul, stepped forward and said:

“Let me tell you who I am, Elin. We spoke of Christian Christiansson the composer, and you sang his song to me and said you would like to hear something about him. I am Christian Christiansson.”

The girl made a little involuntary cry, and his voice faltered for a moment.

“Yes, I am he, and the story I told you was the story of my own unhappy life, only—I have lost my daughter since I wrote that song, and now I am quite alone. Will you not come and take her place, my child? You shall be just the same to me as my own daughter, and you shall never know the difference. You will return with me to England and live my life, and whatever I do you shall do, and wherever I go you shall go also.”

“Think of that, Elin!” said Anna. “You love music—you take after your poor father that way—and you will travel about just as your dear mother used to do!”

“It would be beautiful!” said Elin.

She had been standing all this time by the table with one hand resting lightly upon it, while her sweet face reflected the changing lights of alarm and pain and surprise and joy.

“I can’t think of anything in the world I should love so much, but—I can not, I must not.”

“Elin!”

“Grandma, didn’t you tell me yourself when I came here long ago, and you put me to bed the first time, that I was never to leave Uncle Magnus, and if anybody ever came to take me away I was not to go? I was a little mite, but I gave you my word, I remember, and I am going to keep it.”

“But I was thinking of somebody else then, Elin. I couldn’t know that this gentleman would come—at a time like this, too——”

“But that makes no difference, grandma. Besides, if I were to go to this gentleman and he were to treat me as if I were his own daughter, I should have to think of him as if he were my own father. Would you like that, grandma? And would Uncle Magnus like it?”

“We should sacrifice ourselves, honey, we should sacrifice ourselves that you might be well off and happy.”

“But I don’t want to be well off if you and Uncle Magnus are going to be poor. And I shouldn’t be happy at all—I should be miserable.”

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” moaned Anna, unable to say more. And then the girl turned with a smile to Christian Christiansson, who was throbbing with pride and pain, and she said:

“It is very, very good of you, sir, and there isn’t another girl in the world who wouldn’t be glad to go; but I can’t, you must see yourself I can’t—I must stay with my uncle. Grandma is going to do so, and why shouldn’t I?”

“He would be better without either of us, Elin,” said Anna.

“Don’t say that, grandma.”

“I do say it, my child, and if you only knew how cruel the world is——”

“But God isn’t, and He will not separate us now after we have been together so long. You said so yourself, you know, when I talked of going into service. You said He would find another way, and He will—I’m sure He will.”

It wrung Anna’s heart to have her own teaching coming back to reproach her, yet thinking of Magnus she made one more effort. “But don’t you see, dear, that if you stay with Uncle Magnus he will lose the land, whereas if you go with this gentleman he will be able to keep it?”

Then the innocent young face which had been so full of beautiful trust in the greatness and the goodness of God to triumph over all perils and privations clouded over for one moment, and she said, “Do you want me to go, grandma? And does Uncle Magnus want it?”

Neither of them answered her, and she looked from one to the other—Anna brushing her eyes with the back of her wrinkled hand, and Magnus standing motionless with a white face broken up like the melting snow—and then the cruel swelling in the girl’s heart subsided and her eyes shone like the sun.

“I know you don’t,” she answered herself. “You are only thinking about me.”

And then the brave little soul tossed up her head with a proud look and said, “As for the land—if it comes to losing that or losing me, I know what Uncle Magnus will say. He will say—I know he will—‘Let me keep my little Elin and the land—the land may go!’”

“And so I do, my darling,” cried Magnus, and he opened his great arms to her, and she ran into them and was gathered to his breast.

At the next moment Anna had joined them and Magnus had put his arms around both, and it was just as if they had conquered a great temptation—as if some dark shadow which had threatened to separate them had passed away—for they were clinging together and crying like children.

Christian Christiansson stood aside for a moment and looked on at their happiness, feeling himself without part or lot in it, and then, fearing that he might cry out and betray himself or break down altogether, he turned away and fled into the guest-room.

V

He threw himself face downward on the bed, and the waters of Marah went over and over him. Sight of the happiness he had lost the right to claim was the hardest experience that had yet come to him, and he wept bitterly. “My child! My dear, dear child!” he had wanted to cry, but those were words of proud endearment which he might never use except in the voiceless chambers of his empty heart.

But this mood lasted only for a few moments, and then a fierce and almost savage jealousy took possession of him, and he dried his eyes and sat up in contempt of his own weakness. What right had any one to rob him of his child? Elin was flesh of his flesh, and no man should take her away. Even the law would recognize his right to his own offspring. He had merely to say to the Sheriff, “She is mine,” and the Sheriff would have no choice but to deliver her up to him.

Then calmer moments came, and he saw that he could only assert his legal right to his daughter by disclosing his identity, and that was out of the question. And even if it were possible to carry his daughter away by force, it would be a poor triumph to take her body if he could not also take her soul. Every man wished his children to love him, and unless Elin could love her father, what was the good of claiming her?

He opened his eyes to calm the deafening tumult of his conflicting thoughts, and saw a little faded photograph in a stand on a table that stood beside the bed. It was an old photograph of Thora, and he remembered it immediately, for it was the same that in the better time belonged to Aunt Margret and stood on the drawers beside her door. He took it up in his shaking hand and held the candle to look at it, and then, in a moment, by that magic the Almighty knows, he was back with Thora in the birth-room at Government House, and she was saying, in the tremulous joy of her young motherhood, “Kiss me, Oscar! Put your arms about both of us, dearest! That way—so!”

Something of the tenderness of Thora’s sweet heart returned to him with that haunting memory, and along with it came a new and thrilling thought. If Elin belonged to him by right of Nature, then Nature herself would speak for him. He had only to say to her, “I am your father; you are my daughter,” and she would come to him—she could not help herself—because Nature is a mighty thing and none of us can resist the mysterious call that comes to our blood from the blood that gave us birth!

He would do so; he would find the girl alone and speak to her; he would whisper the secret of his life in the ear of his own child, and then the marvelous Mother of us all would do the rest.

When he returned to the hall, Elin was shaking out the cloth and removing the last of the supper things—all except the bottle and glasses, which she left on the table. “It must be now,” he thought, and though his heart quailed at coming to this last throw in the game he had played for life and love, he put his fortune to the test.

“It was very brave of you, my child,” he said, “to choose poverty when you might have chosen wealth. But you did well, for wealth is only of this world’s making, and the angel that brings us happiness does not ask us if we are poor or rich.”

His voice faltered when he came to what he had to say next, but he rallied and went on:

“It was very sweet of you, too, to remain with your uncle and your grandmother, instead of coming to a stranger, for being of your own flesh and blood they have naturally the first claim upon you. But if—if, instead of Christian Christiansson, I had been your own father, would you—would you have come to me then?”

Elin did not answer him immediately, and he looked steadfastly into her face, feeling that all hope of happiness for the remainder of his life hung on her reply.

“Would you?”

The sweet young face looked troubled for a moment, and then slowly—very slowly and sadly—Elin shook her head.

He felt like a man who had been sentenced to death, but while his face clouded and fell, the girl’s rose and became beautifully calm.

“I don’t see how that could make any difference,” she said. “I couldn’t feel as if you were my father unless I had known you as long as I could remember, and longer even than that. What I call a father is one who has nursed you on his knee when you were a little thing, and kissed you and coaxed you when you were sick, and thought of you and cared for you always, not one who has been away from you all your life, who has never cared for you at all, and whom you wouldn’t know if you met him in the road.”

“But don’t you feel, dear, that there is something in the relation of a child to her father, however he may have neglected her—something intimate and sacred—something she can never know in her relation to anybody else, however much he may have done for her—don’t you feel that, Elin?”

Again the girl thought for a moment, and again she shook her head.

“But if I were to say to you, ‘My child, my dear, dear child, I may have done nothing for you, but still I am your father, and you are the only one who is left to me now, and I want you to come to me and be my daughter, and we shall never be parted again’—if I were to say that to you, would you still hold to your uncle?”

The tremulous fervor with which he spoke these imploring words brought tears to the girl’s eyes, but her heart stood firm and strong.

“Yes,” she said, “I couldn’t help it, because Uncle Magnus has been my real father after all.”

It was all over. His last hold of the girl was lost. Again he felt as if the world had gone away from him, as if the dark column of hope which had shown its bright face for a moment had turned again, and now all was hopeless darkness.

He had thought Nature would speak to the girl, but it had not spoken. Nature was a great, inexorable instrument in the hand of God, and God’s hand was on him. As he had done, so he was being done by—as he had taken the love of Thora from Magnus, so Magnus, after many years, had taken the love of Elin from him. It was right, it was inevitable, and he must bow his head in speechless submission before the justice and the vengeance of God!

He must leave the house as he had come to it, not only without revealing himself to his mother and brother, but also without his child. It would be the bitterest moment of his life, but he must meet it and go on.

“You are quite right, my dear—quite right,” he said. “A child’s love is like a flower in the window—it cannot grow without somebody to water it. Your uncle has done everything for you, and he is entitled to all your affection. It wouldn’t be fair if your father could come back, after all these years, and take you away from him. Cling to him, Elin, love him, and comfort him, and may God bless you for your loyalty and trust!”

He had tried to speak bravely, but his voice broke and he stopped. After a moment he said calmly:

“Can you give me pen and ink and a sheet of writing-paper?”

She brought them instantly, and he sat at the table and wrote a line or two. Then he took out his pocket-book, opened it, and put the paper inside of it, and closed it up again.

“Elin, will you do me a great favor?”

“Oh yes, sir,” said the girl.

“It is late, and I’ve had a long day, and I may not be up when the auction begins in the morning—will you take this pocket-book and give it to the Sheriff the moment he arrives?”

“With pleasure, sir.”

“You will not open it or show it to anybody else, but you will carry it to your room at once and put it under your pillow, and to-morrow morning you will be up early and give it to the Sheriff before he begins the sale—will you do this for me, my dear?”

“Indeed I will, sir.”

“Thank you! And now you must go to bed. Good-by, my child!”

“But I’ll see you in the morning, sir?”

“Who can say? We may both have other things to think about by that time, so we had better say good-by to each other now.”

“But am I not to see you again?”

“Who can say that either! I have come a long way, you know, and now I may have to go—” he hesitated, and then turning away he said, “I may have to go still farther.”

“You have been so kind to me, sir—I am sorry I can not go with you.”

“Ah, God forbid!—I mean, you can not—I see you can not! But if you could have done so I should have been so fond of you, and we should have been such good friends together.”

“I shall never forget you, sir.”

“Nor I you. I shall always think of the brave little girl I met once—only once—and then could see no more.

“You are only a stranger to me, sir, but—but——”

“Yes, I am only a stranger to you, my child, but we have come together on the great ocean of life, and now—now we must say good-by and part.”

“Good-by, sir!”

“Good-by, little girl, and God bless you!”

The girl stepped to her bedroom door and then stopped and turned and looked back at him. Her eyes were full—she knew not why. Nature was saying something to her at last—she knew not what.

He was looking after her with all his hungry soul in his quivering face, and when she turned he stretched out his arms to her.

“Elin!” he whispered, and she came back to him, and he folded her to his heart and kissed her on the forehead and on the lips. Ah, sweet, soft, warm lips, he felt them to the last!

A mist floated before his eyes; he heard footsteps going away from him; he heard a door open and close, and then—his child was gone.

---

Christian Christiansson was alone. He felt that he had come to the lees of his life and saw nothing but a blank where he might crawl to die. Could he go back to Reykjavik? That was impossible, for the Minister and his people would be preparing their banquet in honor of his visit, and to go through such rejoicing would be a scorching martyrdom at which the devil himself would laugh. Could he return to England and resume his old life as the unknown composer? That was impossible also, for he could never write as he had written before, because the old impulse was gone, the fire was burnt out, the life that had inspired him was dead, and because the foundations of his fame were broken up by the new consciousness that he had no right to it, by the sense that his career and all that had come of it had been built on the desecration of his wife’s grave, and by the certainty that his success had been paid for as by the sweat of his very soul.

What then was before him? Old age? What was old age without friends, without children, without love, without respect and with memory—that last joy of a man’s declining days—like a poisoned river running through a wasted land?

Was there nothing before him then? Yes, there was one thing—one only—and as he lay in that room alone with his head over his hands on the table, he had the trembling, thrilling, palpitating sense of supernatural wings hovering above him, and of an awful voice that seemed to say, “THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH!”

At that moment he became aware of other voices—more human and homely voices—murmuring about him, and one of them said, “He has fallen asleep, poor gentleman,” and another, “He has drunk too much, perhaps.” Then a hand touched him on the shoulder and somebody cried in his ear:

“Hadn’t you better go to bed, sir?”

It was his mother, with Magnus behind her, and looking at both he could see that they supposed he was intoxicated. In the wild laboring of heart and brain, it suited him that they should continue to think so, and indeed the strain of nerve had been so hard that when he rose to his feet he staggered like a drunken man.

“Heigho! What’s this?” he laughed. “Your brennie-vin must be pretty heady, landlady. But no matter! It will be a good nightcap and make me sleep the sounder. I’m tired, very tired, but I’m going to have a long sleep at last—a long, long sleep at last.”

“But to-morrow will be New Year’s Day,” said Anna. “The bells ring at daybreak, and the Sheriff will be here soon after, so you’ll have to be stirring early if you want to be ready for the auction.”

“Why, so I shall—I had forgotten all about it—and since we can not agree about the girl I must buy the farm whatever happens. I told you I wanted it for a particular purpose, but I didn’t say what it was. It’s my secret, landlady, but I don’t mind telling you. I want it for my mother.”

“Your mother?”

“That’s so! She was born in these parts, and the poor old thing would like to end her days here.”

“So she tells you to buy up my farmstead?”

“Not she! She doesn’t know anything about it. That’s to be my surprise. I’ve not been a good son, but when I go away never to come back again I want to feel that the dear old soul is happy and comfortable and has a roof to cover her.”

He laughed, with the same sense as before of an hysterical oppression of the heart, and then turned to Magnus and said:

“Sorry to buy your house over your head, but business is business, you know, and anybody is at liberty to bid who has money to pay.”

Magnus moved aside with a contemptuous expression.

“Don’t look so glum, my man. You think you’ve been badly treated and perhaps you have, but you’re the luckiest man in Iceland if you ask me. You think because you’ve done well you ought to be rewarded, but what right have poor wretches like us to expect reward in this world? You think because a man is rich he is to be envied, but what’s the use of having your pocket full if your heart is empty? And you think because Death kills the innocent and the happy it is a cruel monster, but there are worse things than Death, and Life is one of them when you’ve nobody to care whether you live or die. Then cheer up, old fellow! You’ve got your health and your good name, and your mother and that sweet girl to love and to love you, so what the devil have you got to complain of? Nothing at all!”

Saying this with a mixture of real emotion and its mocking make-believe, a touch of the boy came back to him for a moment and he put his arm across his brother’s shoulder as he used to do in the old days, but Magnus shuddered and shrank away.

“Your candle is burning in the bedroom, sir,” said Anna coldly.

And then he saw that his mother also looked black at him, as one who had come to turn them out of house and home, and as one who had tried to tempt the girl away from them, and as one who could laugh at their condition and have no thought except for himself. And thinking that this was the last he would see of her; that it was so different from the parting he had expected; that all hope of pardon and reconciliation was lost; that his mother would never hear that her lingering faith in her prodigal had been justified and never know that he had been and gone, he had as much as he could do not to break down and betray himself even at the end.

But gathering up his clothes which had been drying by the stove, he turned toward the bedroom, saying with another laugh—a laugh that went to Anna’s heart like a sword:

“Don’t look so downhearted, landlady. When things are at their worst they can’t move without they mend. You’ve had your troubles, but you shall drink my health under my mother’s roof-tree to-morrow morning. Good night!”

And then he reeled into the guest-room.

VI

The stranger being gone, mother and son looked into each other’s faces. Then they spoken in whispers.

“Did you hear him?” said Anna.

“About his mother’s roof-tree?” asked Magnus.

“About the auction—about everything. The man can have no feeling—no pity.”

“None.”

“‘Business is business,’ he said, when he talked of buying the place over our heads. And when he spoke of his mother ending her days here he never once thought of me.”

“He never thought of Elin either. He would have taken the girl away from us without a moment’s hesitation.”

“He would,” said Anna. “‘There’s enough in this purse,’ he said, ‘to pay your interest twenty times over.’”

“Did he say that?”

“He did. He took his pocket-book out of his breast-pocket and——”

“His breast-pocket, you say?”

“Yes, ’and I’ll give the money to your son,’ he said, ‘if he’ll give me the girl instead.’”

Anna talked on in an innocent, helpless way without knowing what bad work she was doing, but suddenly, mysteriously, at the mention of the purse a change passed over Magnus’s face and it grew ugly with evil passions.

“He must be rich,” said Anna.

“Richer than anybody has a right to be,” said Magnus.

“Surely God can not mean that anybody should be as rich as that while other people are so poor.”

“God!” said Magnus, and his distorted face quivered.

“If he would only lend us enough to satisfy the Sheriff in the morning!” said Anna.

“What’s the good of expecting a man to help us to keep the farm when he has come to buy it for himself?”

“It’s hard, though, cruelly hard, to be turned out of house and home by the first person who comes along with more money.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” said Magnus.

Down to this moment Anna had only been trying to sympathize with Magnus’s mood, but now something in his tone made her suspect that she had awakened a devil, and she looked at him in terror.

He took up the bottle and drank; he drank out of the neck; and there was a new devil in every drop. His eyes began to gleam with a feverish luster, and Anna trembled. She remembered that Magnus had not taken any strong drink until to-day since the day of Thora’s funeral, and then she thought of her father, and a sensation of extreme cold crept over her.

“Let us not talk of it any more,” she said, as she tried to put the bottle away, but Magnus held on to it.

Mother and son looked at each other again, and then Anna went over to the stranger’s door and listened.

“Has he locked it?” asked Magnus.

“No, I’m afraid— No, no, he has not.”

“What is he doing?”

“The candle is out—he must be in bed already.”

“Then,” said Magnus, “he has thrown himself down without undressing and the pocket-book is on him still.”

“Magnus, what are you thinking of?” said Anna—her teeth were chattering.

“Would it be so very wicked?”

“What?”

“To take as much as would satisfy the Sheriff in the morning?”

“Magnus! I didn’t mean that.”

“He would never miss it—never know it was gone—and it would enable us to keep the farm and so save us from starvation.”

“Oh, dear! What have I done?”

“He’s a prodigal himself, it seems. Very well, let prodigal pay for prodigal.”

She could not breathe freely—she could only look at Magnus in speechless surprise. He took up the bottle again and gulped clown the last of the liquor.

“He has drunk a good deal—he will sleep heavily—and he won’t awake until the auction is over.”

“Let us go to bed,” said Anna.

“Go yourself,” he growled, for the furies that march in the brain of the drunken man had mastered him.

“Magnus,” said Anna, “if you will not go to bed I shall stay up all night with you.”

Then the devil that had changed Magnus into a cunning, savage beast, showed him what he had to do.

“Very well, let us go to bed,” he replied.

He bolted the outer door again and raked out the stove, while his mother extinguished the lamp and re-lit the candles. She thought the evil impulse that had come to him had been conquered, and she talked of other matters.

“I’ve made up Eric’s bed for you, and you’ll find everything comfortable,” she said.

As she passed Elin’s door she opened it gently and held her head aside to listen. The sound of the soft and measured breathing came out to them for a moment and then the door was closed again.

“Poor child! She would lay her head on her pillow full of faith in the miracle that is to happen before to-morrow morning. Of such is the kingdom of heaven!”

They parted at the door of the badstofa, and a few minutes afterward the little house lay silent and dark in the arms of the hills and on the breast of the snow, but the wings of Death hung over it.

---

Magnus did not go to bed. He threw himself on the eiderdown and went through a fierce fight with God as represented by God’s vicar, his conscience. A vision of the pocket-book in the stranger’s breast-pocket danced before his dark heart, and he told himself that come what would he must take enough of the stranger’s money to pay the interest in the morning. If he did not do so the man would buy the farmstead and Elin and his mother would be turned adrift.

On this thought came compunctions. To take the man’s money would be to steal, and Magnus had never stolen. But faith being already gone, morality followed, and he wrestled with his conscience and overcame it. What he was going to do was what men did every day, only they called it business, and they did it to wrong the right, whereas he would do it to right the wrong. Magnus marshaled his reasons and justified himself. Here was a man so rich that he would not know to-morrow morning that he had lost what was sufficient to make his dear ones happy. That man was going to expose them to poverty and destitution. Surely it was right, it was necessary, it was his duty to prevent him.

In the mad tangle of his disordered brain he saw everything that had happened that day in a sinister light, and it seemed as if fate had thrown the man into his hands. He might have gone to lodge at the Parsonage—he had come there! He might have concealed the purpose of his coming—he had revealed it! He might have said nothing of the pocket-book—he had shown it with childlike simplicity! Surely this was the way out of his difficulties which Destiny had marked out for him, and not to take it would be to cover himself with self-reproaches when his dear ones came down to want.

Having persuaded himself that he could not help but take as much of the stranger’s money as was necessary to pay the interest, he began to ask why he should take so little. If the pocket-book in the man’s breast-pocket contained enough to pay the interest twenty times over, why not take enough to buy the farm out and out? That would enable him to leave to Elin the inheritance which he had lost through his brother’s extravagance and crime. This man was about to take it away from her—he must not and he should not do so!

Stage by stage he pushed back the bulwarks of conscience until he came to ask himself why he should not take all. His mind was clogged and numb by this time, but he knew well what that meant. It meant taking the stranger’s life. There was at first an indescribable horror in the thought of killing a human being, but after a moment it passed away. This man alone stood between his dear ones and shelter—why shouldn’t he? This man threatened to take their lives by exposing them to starvation—why shouldn’t he take his life instead?

A momentary qualm came with the thought that he would be attacking one who had trusted himself to the hospitality of his house, a defenseless man in his sleep. But he thought of the stranger’s heartless laughter, his callousness to their condition, and recalled what he had said of his mother, and pictured her sitting there surrounded by every comfort while his own mother, born in that place, was turned out to perish, and then his gorge rose again and his heart knew no pity.

He began to ask himself how it could be done. It could be done, quite easily. Nobody except themselves had seen the man; nobody else would ever know that he had been to their house. He could tell his mother and Elin that the stranger had gone away in the early morning. They would believe him, and even if they did not they would hold their tongues, for his interest would be their interest, and all he would do would be done for them.

A new and awful light illumined his gloomy mind, and he saw himself doing everything. No other eye would see, no other ear would hear. It was freezing hard to-night, and if it was found in the drowning pool when the ice melted the story would be that the stranger had lost his way in the snowstorm and stumbled over the rocks.

Having satisfied himself that he could defeat this world’s judgment, the tortured man in the toils of his temptation began to think of the judgment of the next. But fear of that vanished in a moment. Nothing was known in the other world of what took place in this one, and God interfered but little in the affairs of men!

At the thought of God a singing noise came into his ears like water in the ears of a drowning man. It was his conscience going down after its last gasp, for he was telling himself that murder though it might be, and contrary to God’s law, God had done nothing for him, and therefore he was not called upon to do anything for God. He had been a good man all his life, yet God had left him in the lurch. God and the world were letting his mother and Elin perish, therefore he must fight the world—and God!

In the last convulsion of his human nature he remembered that once before the impulse to kill had come to him, and that he had suffered the tortures of the damned whenever afterward he had thought of it. But that was different, that was in the whirlwind of outraged passion, and if he had carried out his threat it would have been the worst of crimes, the unpardonable sin, the sin against the Holy Ghost—a brother’s murder! A thousand times he had thanked God that Oscar had not lived to come home, but how strange were the ways of fate—another man, another heartless prodigal, had come there, and if his dear ones were to be saved from starvation and the consequences of Oscar’s crimes, he knew what he had to do!

“Let prodigal pay for prodigal,” he thought again, and then he leaped up from the bed.

His brute nature, goaded on by the flattering devil of drink, had conquered his conscience, yet his knees knocked together as he went on tiptoe by his mother’s room, and when he came to Elin’s door he could hardly breathe. Their pure souls were sleeping in the protecting atmosphere of prayer; and when he asked himself what he was to say in the morning if they wanted to know where he had got the money, his mind was so clogged and numb that he could find no answer.

But this thought, with the vision that came after it of how his mother and Elin would look at him with searching and suspicious glances—of how when all would be over and he hoped to be at rest he would find them sitting together in silence, staring at nothing—nearly broke down the brute in him and his whole body was shaken by a kind of tearless sob. Nevertheless the flash of human light on his dark heart only made the blackness more profound, and after a moment he went on with his preparations.

When he stepped on tiptoe into the hall, the two sheep-dogs who had been sleeping on the mat by the door got up and stretched themselves and yawned, and lest they should make a noise he took them out and locked them up in a shed. After that he went over to the stable, which was at some distance from the dwelling, and saddled and bridled the stranger’s mare, and then with a sharp cut of his whip he sent her galloping and whinnying into the darkness. A breath of icy wind was coming down the valley as if day were stirring in its morning sleep, and a faint pink and white light in the eastern sky, with a glint on the western glaciers, seemed to say that the dawn was near, but the drink was in Magnus’s eyes and he could not see clearly.

No snow had fallen since the traveler arrived, and returning to the front of the farmstead Magnus made backward tracks from the porch to the river, partly in order to obliterate the stranger’s footsteps and partly to conceal his own when he should come out again, carrying a heavy burden. The man was gone by this time, and Magnus was like a night-bird hovering about his own house and thinking of his prey.

When he returned to the hall there was no sound there except that of the ashes slipping in the stove, and of the clock ticking in the darkness the deliberate seconds. He took off his boots, leaving on his snow-stockings only, and then he picked up a large cushion from the arm-chair and stepped to the stranger’s door and listened.

But heaven as well as hell is in the heart of every man, as long as life is with him, and the tearless sob came back to Magnus and shook his whole body, as he thought at the last moment of the awful pity of the thing he had to do. Yet telling himself again that God did nothing in this world, and saying once more, “Let prodigal pay for prodigal,” he turned the handle and opened the door.

Then he stepped softly into the guest-room and bolted the door behind him.

VII

Anna, at that moment, had awakened from a frightening dream. On first going to her room she had been troubled by the memory of what she had done to awaken evil thoughts in Magnus, and visions had come to her of how, if anything happened, Magnus might say, “You put it into my head, mother.” To banish her self-reproaches she had said a prayer for forgiveness, telling God she had never once thought of theft or violence, but only of Magnus and Elin and the inheritance they had lost through her importunity, and how cruel it seemed that while other people had so much more than they wanted, such hard times should come to her dear children.

Then she had gone to bed, and the voice of the stranger, which had teased her all the evening through with memories she could not fix, haunted her again, and the light being out, and her eyes no longer disturbed by sight of the stranger’s different face, she knew whose voice it reminded her of. It was a voice very dear to her, a voice always near to her, Oscar’s voice, which she was never to hear again.

When, with a thrill of the heart, this thought came to Anna, it altered the stranger altogether. His laughter ceased to be cruel, and what he had said of himself not being a good son became touching. And when she thought of his poor mother waiting for her prodigal and so soon to see him home again, and pictured her joy when he should say, “Mother, mother! I’m here at last, and we shall never, never be parted again!” her heart overflowed with sympathy, and she was sorry she had not been kinder to him when he was going to bed.

Then she went to sleep and the dream spirit took her back to the good time when she had two boys in her house, a dark one and a fair one, and the father had punished the dark one unjustly, and his stern and gloomy soul, with its sense of wrong, would not suffer him to explain, but the fair one was sobbing out a confession—“It was not Magnus, it was me, papa”—and a moment afterward two happy little heads were on the same pillow side by side, and both were laughing merrily.

In the shifting kaleidoscope of her dream this picture had hardly gone when Anna awoke with the clearest consciousness of Oscar’s voice crying, “Mother! Mother! Mother!” She thought it must have been the stranger calling in his sleep, for the china ornaments on her dressing-table seemed to ring, but when she listened there was no other sound.

Then the memory of Magnus’s temptation came rolling back on her like a thundercloud over a clear sky, and she got up to go to her son’s room to make sure that he was in bed.

Magnus had not been to bed!

With candle in hand, and still in her night-dress, Anna hurried to the hall, crying in a whisper of only half-realized apprehension, “Magnus! Magnus!”

There was no reply.

She listened at the stranger’s door and thought she heard a movement inside the room, but she dared not enter or knock.

“Magnus! Magnus!” she whispered again, but no answer came back to her. She heard the neighing of a horse that seemed to be running round and round the house and her flesh began to creep, for that sound in the night was like the cry of a disembodied soul. Then there came the deadened noise of dogs barking, and she knew they were their own dogs and that they must have been shut up in an outhouse. This started a new thought, and she ran to the outer door to see if it had been opened.

The door was unbolted!

She was about to open it and cry again when she heard a noise behind her. It came from the stranger’s room, and putting her ear to the door she distinctly heard the sounds of sobs. Some one inside was sobbing.

She knew the low, stifled voice. It was Magnus. He was on his knees or prostrate on the floor, and he was sobbing as if his heart would break. At that Anna boldly tried to open the door, but found it fastened on the inside.

“Magnus! Magnus!” she whispered, but he did not answer.

She was now sure that the awful thing she had thought of had come to pass. Her suspense had deepened to fear, but pity and love conquered every other feeling, and going down on her knees in her night-dress, she whispered through the key-hole:

“Magnus! Magnus! Open the door. It is only mother! It was all my fault, dear! Let me come in!”

But the smothered sobbing inside continued, and no other sound came back to her. Then in the silence of all else she heard the sound of sleigh-bells outside. At first she thought this must be a ringing in her ears, but the bells grew louder and came nearer, and then the dogs in the outhouse barked again.

Fear deepened to terror, the necessity for concealment flashed upon her, and she knocked at the bedroom door and cried in the same affrighted whisper:

“Magnus, there is some one coming. Wait till he has gone. Don’t stir. Don’t come out. Only tell me you hear me.”

The sobbing ceased, but Magnus did not speak. Meantime the sleigh-bells came nearer and nearer, with the cracking of a whip, the whoop of a driver, and the hiss of runners in the soft snow.

“Magnus! Magnus!” cried Anna loudly, in a last effort, but she was stopped by the near shout of some one outside, “Helloa! helloa there!”—and she rose to her feet with an intention of bolting the outer door.

Before she could do so there was a metallic knock on the window-pane, a voice crying, “God be with you!” and footsteps hurrying up the outer steps. Then Anna turned about and fled back to her bedroom.

While she dressed she heard the outer door thrown open and the sound of many persons trooping into the hall. They were very bright and happy, for they laughed merrily and talked all together, and the house was full of noise.

When she came out of the badstofa she met the postboy on his way to the elt-house to boil water to give his ponies a hot drink, and on returning to the hall she found the door and the shutters of the window open, the daylight streaming in, and the postman himself there with several passengers, including the Factor, who was muffled up to the eyes, and Margret Neilsen, who was unrolling herself from the folds of a white bearskin.

“Helloa!” cried everybody, and the postman said, “Here we are at last, you see! We couldn’t come yesterday by reason of the snowstorm, but the Factor actually got me to start away as soon as it stopped at eleven o’clock last night—eleven!”

“Well, we don’t kill a pig every day, do we?” said the Factor, and while the men laughed and winked, Margret Neilsen said:

“And how’s Anna?”

Anna was speechless and ghastly white, so the Factor said, “We seem to have startled her out of her senses, for she looks as if she had seen a ghost. But where’s Magnus?”

“Magnus? Oh—somewhere about,” said Anna.

“And how’s my precious Elin?” said Aunt Margret.

“She’s not up yet,” said Anna.

“Then I’ll go and waken her. Which is her room—this one?” said Aunt Margret, making for the guest-room.

“No, no,” said Anna, intercepting her and standing with her back to the guest-room door. “That one,” and Aunt Margret went into Elin’s bedroom.

“And now,” said the Factor, with winks all round him, “what about the other one?”

Anna looked at the Factor in mute terror.

“The new-comer, you know? Not stirring yet, I suppose?”

“New-comer?”

“Well, guest, friend, whatever you choose to call him.”

“What friend?”

“Why, the friend who came last night, of course.”

Anna, who had never lied in her life, wanted to lie now, but she could not do so. “I don’t understand you, Factor,” she said faintly.

“Well!” said the Factor, and then, as if by an afterthought, “I thought he wouldn’t wish to startle you, having been so long away and supposed to be dead. But don’t you know yet who he is?”

Anna trembled and said, “Of whom are you speaking, Oscar Neilsen?”

“Of the tall fair man with the pointed beard who came to lodge at your house last night.”

Anna was now speechless with terror, and the company, misunderstanding her silence, became suddenly very grave. “Can it be possible that he lost his way in the snowstorm?” said one. “But he knew every inch of the road, and could find his way blindfold,” said another. “Such a night, though,” said a third. “He got as far as the House of Rest.” “But the boy there said he would never see the end of his journey.”

“Well, this is serious,” said the Factor. “The Minister wanted him to stay at Government House over-night, but he seemed so anxious to see you——”

“To see me!” said Anna.

“Naturally, after his long absence. Strange! very strange! But do you mean to say that no traveler came here last night?”

A vague shadow of the Factor’s meaning had flashed upon Anna’s mind, and the terror of a moment ago had deepened to horror. What had Magnus done in the blindness of his passion and despair? But even then the desire to save her son was above all other emotions, and she was about to deny all knowledge of the traveler, when the door behind her was opened and a voice over her shoulder said:

“Yes, a traveler did come here last night, but he went away again in the early morning.”

It was Magnus, and when Anna turned to look at him she drew a deep breath of relief, for she knew he was telling the truth. His face, since she saw it last, had undergone a mysterious and miraculous change. The gloomy arrogance of despair had gone, something had carried light into the darkness of his soul, and he looked like a man who had come as from the immediate presence of his God.

“But this is stranger than ever,” said the Factor. “It was known that he had taken a large sum of money out of the Bank, and everybody supposed he meant to buy up this place at the auction.”

“Yes,” said Aunt Margret, coming out of Elin’s bedroom, “to give to his old mother.”

And then Elin’s soft voice was heard to say, “Has the Sheriff come yet?”

“Who is asking for the Sheriff?” said the Sheriff himself, coming forward at that moment.

“The gentleman gave me this pocket-book last night, and told me to deliver it to you before the auction began this morning.”

“It’s not for me, though,” said the Sheriff, who had taken the pocket-book to the table and opened it, and was reading the writing on the sheet of paper which fell out first, “‘For Elin, Oscar’s daughter, from Christian Christiansson.’”

“A present for Elin, perhaps,” said the Factor.

“A thousand-crown note!” cried the Sheriff.

The gaiety of the company was breaking into loud congratulations, when the Sheriff, who was still opening the folds of the pocket-book, said, “Wait! There’s more than that—much more! One—two—three—fifty thousand—another—and another—and”—then the rapid rustling of bank-notes, followed by the delighted cry, “Two hundred thousand crowns!”

“The very sum he took out of the bank!” said the Factor.

“Kiss me, my precious!” said Aunt Margret.

“Me, too, granddaughter,” cried the Factor.

Anna looked stunned, and Magnus like one who wished the earth to swallow him. But the Factor rattled along with shouts and laughter.

“Now I understand everything. He has given the money to the girl, but left it to her friends and relations to advise her as to what she is to do with it.”

Elin’s blue eyes being still full of bewilderment, the Factor kissed her again and said, “Now who do you think has left you this great fortune, little one?”

“Christian Christiansson,” said the girl.

“Certainly! But don’t you know who Christian Christiansson is? No? You neither, Anna?”

Anna was trembling on the verge of discovery. “Who?” she said, but rather with her lips than with her voice.

“Why, Oscar—your son Oscar, who isn’t dead at all, and has come back and made amends to everybody! I always knew there was good stuff in my godson!”

The truth burst on Anna in a whirlwind of joy—joy that her son was alive, joy that he had come home and justified her faith in him, joy, too, though with a twinge of pain in it, that he had gone away again and further trouble with Magnus was averted. A prayer gushed from her heart and she wanted to go down on her knees.

“My son!” she said in a breathless whisper.

“My father!” said Elin, with a tenderness the word had never had for her before.

The company were now cackling and crowing again, but the two women—the old one and the young one—looked round for Magnus. He was standing at the back, his strong face all broken up and melted. It was not at this moment that the truth had first burst on him. That had come like a blinding blow of light the instant he had entered the guest-room and realized that God did something after all in this world for His children.

“Mother—Elin!” he stammered, and he opened his arms to them.

“It’s the miracle, isn’t it?” said the girl.

It was the miracle indeed.

---

There was no auction in Thingvellir that day, and when the bells rang for service the company went to church. The little wooden tabernacle was full of worshippers, for it was New Year’s Day, and the farmers had ridden over with their families from all the country round about. They sat, in their thick mufflers and snow-stockings and the mist of their smoking breath, as far up the church as the square rail enclosing the communion table, on stools about the octagonal pulpit and even among the refuse, the lumber and potted-meat barrels that were stored in the gallery.

The Factor was there, very loud in his responses, fixing up the figures on the tin plate which announced the hymns; Elin, too, with the wonder not yet gone from her innocent blue eyes; Anna with her tempered happiness and a heart overflowing with thanksgiving, and (most strange of all) Magnus himself, a changed and humbled man.

Everybody looked at Magnus, in surprise at seeing him there, but Magnus looked at no one. While the Pastor read the lesson (“All we like sheep have gone astray”), while he gave out his text (“This day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise”), while he preached his homely sermon on the conversion of the dying thief on the cross, showing the shortness of time, the power of redemption, and the certainty of death’s sundering, and even while the deacon chanted the anthem (“Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning”), and the congregation sang the closing hymn, and Elin’s silvery young voice ringing up to the round ceiling reminded him of her mother’s, Magnus sat with his face toward the picture on the wall above the communion-table.

It was a picture of Christ in white robes and among warm eastern foliage, healing the blind man by the wayside, and while he looked at it a great softening of the heart came to him, for he thought of the blessed but awful moment, only just passed, when the scales fell from his own eyes, and his naked soul stood face to face with its Maker.

That was the moment when, with murder in his mind and a spirit of war with God, he had entered the stranger’s bedroom and bolted the door behind him, and then found that his victim had been snatched out of his hands and heard a fearful voice which seemed to say, “Stop! or the voice of thy brother’s blood will cry unto Me from the ground!”

When the service was over there was much handshaking and well-wishing outside the porch, for rumor of what had happened in Anna’s household had passed from mouth to mouth, but Magnus took his old mother on his arm and walked home with her alone, except for Elin, who tripped through the crisp snow by their side, humming a little of the last hymn.

The young people were racing the ponies to and fro in their joy of the first snow; the old ones were gossiping in groups on the exciting news of the day; and the Factor, who was swinging along in his plaid-shawl, with a contented expression, like an old cow going home in the evening with her udder full, was saluting everybody, and inviting all and sundry to the Inn-farm, for a cup of coffee.

It was more than a cup of coffee he had had prepared for them, for assuming command while Magnus seemed paralyzed by surprise, he had ordered a lamb to be killed, and Aunt Margret remained behind to roast it.

The dinner was a large and long one, for everybody was welcome to it, and before it came to an end the Factor rose to propose a toast.

“Every snow-cowl has an end,” he said, “and I am happy to inform you all that the cloud that has hung so long over the Inn-farm, over Anna Magnusson’s family and over my family, is now gone for good. ‘Show the man and not the table,’ says one of our Sagas, but in this case we have had to show you the table and not the man. He will be on his way to Reykjavik by this time, I suppose, and, if prophecy is the wise man’s guess, I guess he will get such a rousing welcome there as no man ever had in this old island before.

“Brothers and sisters, I give you a health—Anna’s long-lost son, our long-lost son, Iceland’s long-lost son—Oscar Stephen-son!”

The toast was received with shouts and the jingling of glasses, but Anna did not drink, and Magnus dropped his head.

VIII

On the east of the plain and the lake of Thingvellir there is a pass going over the mountain of Hengel to the little trading station of Eyrarbakki. It winds through a number of geysers and mineral springs which seem to be always smoking against the bare side of the fell. They are little pools of simmering water in the crusted yellow earth, some of them, white and sparkling as a star, some round and deep-blue as a woman’s eye, some oval and blood-red, like the living heart of some monstrous animal.

You walk warily on the path between, for the earth is hot and thin under his feet, and sometimes it throbs like the lid of a boiling kettle, and sometimes there is a smothered roar beneath you as of mighty battles in the bowels of the earth, and then the pools begin to boil and send up spouts of foaming water and tongues of liquid flame, and the air is full of sulphurous vapor.

An awful, evil, and devilish place, looking like a cauldron over a circle of hellish fire. But higher up the pass the snow lies white and calm and crisp, and higher still are the glistening glaciers, and there, while the mountain quakes in its volcanic throes, the avalanche comes down in winter so suddenly that no man can hear or see it, for it is loud as the crack of doom and swift as the shaft of death.

At daybreak that day Christian Christiansson was crossing this pass on his way to Eyrarbakki, intending to take ship to Norway. Although it was only two hours since he had pushed open the guest-room window and left the Inn-farm, he was already a stronger and braver man. Then he had thought of nothing but ending everything, and the shadow of self-destruction had floated before him, but now he saw clearly that until God ordained he should die it was his duty to live. As he had sinned so he should suffer. He must pay his penalty to its last pang, its uttermost moment. His penalty was to live on without the love he had forfeited, the happiness he had lost the right to claim. It was hard, but it was just, and he must face the end without flinching. Welcome life, then, as long as it lasted! Welcome death when it was due!

After he had passed through the heat and smoke and come out on the clear heights beyond he paused to look back. The world around was all white and stark under the snow of last night’s storm, but a crimson shaft from the sun which had not yet risen was crossing the topmost peaks, and the lowlands were still sleeping in a veil of mist. He thought he could hear the ringing of the church bell, and that sweet human sound came winging its way up to him through the vapor of the sulphur-pits as the singing of a star might rise through the clouds of the world to the ears of the souls in heaven.

Presently the sun strode up and the mist fell back, and then he saw in the valley far below the little church itself and the home he had left behind him. He had left happiness there, and love, and warm comfort, for that was his reparation to the dear ones he had injured, and now for his atonement to God he was going out alone, stripped of everything and unknown to any one.

It was as much as he could bear to think of that, but he smiled to himself sadly while he pictured the surprise and joy of the happy scene when the girl would come out with the pocket-book and the auction would be stopped. He thought, too, of his mother in church, with a soul full of gratitude, and saw Elin with a ray of sunlight from the lead-lighted window on the heart-breaking sweetness of her smile. It was not thus that he had expected to leave them when for ten years he had worked by the sweat of body and spirit that he might come back and be forgiven. But it was not in this world that the prodigal could be taken back; not here that any earthly father could run to meet him and throw his arms about his neck. What he had sown he must reap, and not all his penitence and tears could undo what he had done.

It was long before he could take his last look at the home he was leaving forever, and when at length he drew a deep breath and went on, he had to comfort himself with the thought that Thora would be pleased with him for giving up their child to Magnus. Her voice from the other world seemed to come to him and say, “Well done! Poor, brave, wounded heart, God’s angels rejoice over you!” But it was hard to find solace in heavenly cheer while his blood ran warm and yearned for human company.

Before he was aware of it he was at the foot of the glaciers, those great lone homes of Nature never trodden by the foot of man or animal, where no bird sings and no flower grows, where only the wind moans over motionless billows of ice and the sun rises in a blank barrenness on chasms of the frozen deep. Looking back from this place he could see nothing of the valley and the houses of men, or of anything but a wide circle of mountain peaks, all silent and white, in which he was the only living thing. And then the feeling of being cut off from the rest of humanity amid these grand but grim surroundings elevated his senses and affected him like music, like composing, with a sort of ecstacy which was part rapture and partly pain.

In this ecstasy of emotion he asked himself if his life had been wasted, if happiness was gone from him even if, because he had sinned, there was nothing before him now but renunciation and suffering. And then the teaching of his childhood came back to him with a new and sublime significance, and he saw for the first time the lesson of life and the meaning of death. The lesson of life was Duty—to do right without expectation of reward or fear of punishment; and the meaning of death was to bring to the sinful, penitent soul the pardon the world can not give.

Then thank God for life, but thank God for death also! Whatever a man’s sin, Nature could not forget it, and the laws of life could not forgive, but the mercy of God was without measure of guilt, and the gates of heaven were wide!

God veiled His face from His creatures, and to man’s questioning eyes the infinite wisdom was as blank as these white walls of ice and snow, but two thousand years ago a simple Galilean had read this riddle of life as no man before or since has read it. He had read it for all men, good or bad, but most of all for wayworn sinners like himself, for whom the world has no pity, and no forgiveness. And though he was the guiltiest of the guilty, and his sin had found him out, and as the price of his repentance he had had to give up everything in life that he held most dear—the love of his child and the hope of pardon and reconciliation—yet love and pardon and reconciliation were waiting for him still when God’s own voice should call him, and “this mortal should put on immortality.”

By this time he was in that mood in which a man of his temperament finds it difficult to distinguish the real from the imaginary, in which he hears the sounds of Nature and mistakes them for voices from the other world. He had wandered without knowing it from the path of the pass, which was marked by stones standing upright out of the snow, when the volcanic fire in the womb of the mountain began to shake it with mighty throbs, and then suddenly the awful stillness was broken by a crash and a resounding rumble as of echoing thunder coming down from the snow-capped heights.

Oscar Stephenson did not see or hear or feel anything. He was only conscious of a burst of heavenly music, of a sense of ten thousand angels singing an anthem, a triumphant pæan of praise that grew louder and louder every moment; a sense of blinding light, and of traveling at a terrific velocity into the realms of the sun; a sense of the Day of Judgment, of the life of the world being over, its busy throngs gone, its pageants finished, its honors, distinctions, castes, gold, wealth, and fame passed into nothingness; a sense of being outside the great Judgment Hall with an infinite multitude of kings and beggars, good men and bad, the guilty and the innocent, and of kneeling there among the meanest and most ashamed; a sense of a spirit stooping to him and taking his hand and saying, “Come,” of looking up into her face, and seeing it was Thora, and of his breath coming so fast and short that he could scarcely breathe; a sense of stumbling along with his head down and the spirit leading him forward and singing as they ascended; a sense of an overwhelming Presence somewhere in front of him, of the music dying down and becoming fainter and fainter, and then of an awful hush and of a blessed Voice which said:

“FOR THIS MY SON WAS DEAD AND IS ALIVE AGAIN, WAS LOST AND IS FOUND.”

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A moment afterward there was no one on Hengel mountain, the great lone home of Nature was calm and white and silent.

The End