the priest.

"Yes, yes," said the lad more loudly; "not in a day, or an hour, or a
moment, but in twenty long years."

"Hush, hush, my son," the old priest murmured.

But Jason did not hear him. "Now listen," he cried, "and hear my
vow." And still he held the cold hand in his hands, and still the
ashy face rested on them.

"I will hunt the world over until I find that man, and when I have
found him I will slay him."

"What are you saying?" cried the priest.

But Jason went on with an awful solemnity. "If he should die, and we
should never meet, I will hunt the world over until I find his son,
and when I have found him I will kill him for his father's sake."

"Silence, silence," cried the priest.

"So help me God!" said Jason.

"My son, my son, Vengeance is His. What are we that we should presume
to it?"

Jason heard nothing, but the frost of life's first winter that had
bound up his heart, deafening him, blinding him, choking him, seemed
all at once to break. He pushed the cold face gently back on to the
pillow, and fell over it with sobs that shook the bed.

They buried the daughter of the Governor in the acre allotted to the
dead poor in the yard of the Cathedral of Reykjavik. The bells were
ringing a choral peal between matins and morning service. Happy
little girls in bright new gowns, with primroses on their breasts
yellowing their round chins, went skipping in at the wide west
doorway, chattering as they went like linnets in spring. It was
Easter Day, nineteen years after Stephen Orry had fled from Iceland.

Next morning Jason signed articles on the wharf to sail as seaman
before the mast on an Irish schooner homeward bound for Belfast,
with liberty to call at Whitehaven in Cumberland, and Ramsey in the
Isle of Man.

CHAPTER IV.

AN ANGEL IN HOMESPUN.

The little island in the middle of the Irish Sea has through many
centuries had its own language and laws, and its own judges and
governors. Very, very long ago, it had also its own kings; and one of
the greatest of them was the Icelandic seadog who bought it with
blood in 1077. More recently it has had its own reigning lords, and
one of the least of them was the Scottish nobleman who sold it for
gold in 1765. After that act of truck and trade the English crown
held the right of appointing the Governor-General. It chose the son
of the Scottish nobleman. This was John, fourth Duke of Athol, and he
held his office fifty-five bad years. In