rry passing away
with a tender light in his eyes and a word of blessing on his lips.
At that sight she had stood on the threshold like one who is
transfixed, and how long that moment had lasted she never knew. But
the thing she remembered next was that Jason had taken her by the
hand and drawn her up, with all the fire of her spirit gone, to where
the man lay dead before them, and had made her swear to him there and
then never to speak of what she had seen, and to put away from her
mind forever the vague things she had but partly guessed. After that
he had told her, with a world of pain, that Stephen Orry had been his
father; that his father had killed his mother by base neglect and
cruelty; that to wipe out his mother's wrongs he had vowed to slay
his father; and that his father, not knowing him, save in the vision
of his delirium, had died in the act of blessing him. Greeba had
yielded to Jason, because she had been conquered by his stronger
will, and was in fear of the passion which flashed in his face; but
hearing all this, she remembered Michael Sunlocks, and how he must
stand as the son of the other woman; and straightway she found her
own reasons why she should be silent on all that she had that night
seen and heard. This secret was the first of the bonds between them;
and the second, though less obvious, was even more real.

Losing no time, Adam Fairbrother had written a letter to Michael
Sunlocks, by that name, telling him of the death of his father, and
how, so far as the facts were known, the poor man came by it in
making the port in his boat after seeing his son away in the packet.
This he had despatched to the only care known to him, that of the
Lord Bishop Petersen, at his Latin School of Reykjavik; but after a
time the letter had come back, with a note from the Bishop saying
that no such name was known to him, and no such student was under
his charge. Much afraid that the same storm that had led Stephen Orry
to his end had overtaken Michael Sunlocks also, Adam Fairbrother
had then promptly re-addressed his letter to the care of the
Governor-General, who was also the Postmaster, and added a postscript
asking if, after the sad event whereof he had thought it his task in
love and duty to apprise him, there was the same necessity that his
dear boy should remain in Iceland. "But, indite me a few lines
without delay," he wrote, "giving me assurance of your safe arrival,
for what has happened of late days has h