r to leave her, however
tempted. And when one night after a storm an open boat came ashore,
he took it and used it to fish with, and thus he lived, and thus he
wore away his wretched days.

And yet he could never have borne his punishment but for the sweet
solace of the child. It was the flower in his dungeon; the bird at
its bars. Since that bad night, when his secret had burst from him,
he had nursed it and cherished it, and done for it its many tender
offices. Every day he had softened its oatcake in his broth; and
lifted the barley out of his own bowl into the child's basin. In
summer he had stripped off shoes and stockings to bathe the little
one in the bay, and in winter he had wrapped the child in his jacket
and gone bare-armed. It was now four years old and went everywhere
with Stephen, astride on his broad back or perched on his high
shoulders. He had christened it Michael, but because its long wavy
hair grew to be of the color of the sun he called it, after the
manner of his people, Sunlocks. And like the sun it was, in that hut
in Port-y-Vullin, for when it awoke there was a glint of rosy light,
and when it slept all was gloom.

He taught it to speak his native Icelandic tongue, and the woman, who
found everything evil that Stephen did, found this a barrier between
her and the child. It was only in his ignorance that he did it. But
oh, strange destiny! that out of the father's ignorance was to shape
the child's wisdom in the days that were to come!

And little Sunlocks was eyes and ears to Stephen, and hope to his
crushed spirit and intelligence to his slow mind. At sight of the
child the vacant look would die away from Stephen's face; at play
with him Stephen's great hulking legs would run hither and thither in
ready willingness; and at hearing his strange questions, his wondrous
answers, his pretty clever sayings, Stephen's dense wit would seem to
stand agape.

Oh, little Sunlocks--little Sunlocks--floating like the day-dawn into
this lone man's prison house, how soon was your glad light to be
overcast! For all at once it smote Stephen like a blow on the brain
that though it was right that he should live with the woman, yet it
was an awful thing that the child should continue to do so. Growing
up in such an atmosphere, with such an example always present to his
eyes, what would the child become? Soured, saddened, perhaps cunning,
perhaps malicious; at least adopting himself, as his father had done
bef