brought it back to her in the colors of a thrice-told tale. Vain effort of fear and pride! It was nevertheless to prepare the lad for the future that was before him.

And through all the days of her worse than widowhood, amid dark memories of the past and thoughts of the future wherein many passions struggled together, the hope lay low down in Rachel's mind that Stephen would return to her. Could he continue to stand in dread of the threat of his own wife? No, no, no. It had been only the hot word of a moment of anger, and it was gone. Stephen was staying away in fear of the brother of Patricksen. When that man was dead, or out of the way, he would return. Then he would see their boy, and remember his duty towards him, and if the lad ever again spoke bitterly of one whom he had never yet seen, she on her part would chide him, and the light of revenge that had sometimes flashed in his brilliant blue eyes would fade away and in uplooking and affection he would walk as a son with his father's hand.

Thus in the riot of her woman's heart hope fought with fear and love with hate. And at last the brother of Patricksen did indeed disappear. Rumor whispered that he had returned to the Westmann Islands, there to settle for the rest of his days and travel the sea no more.

"Now he will come," thought Rachel. "Wherever he is, he will learn that there is no longer anything to fear, and he will return."

And she waited with as firm a hope that the winds would carry the word as Noah waited for the settling of the waters after the dove had found the dry land.

But time went on and Stephen did not appear, and at length under the turmoil of a heart that fought with itself, Rachel's health began to sink.

Then Patricksen returned. He had a message for her. He knew where her husband was. Stephen Orry was on the little Island of Man, far away south, in the Irish Sea. He had married again, and he had another child. His wife was dead, but his son was living.

Rachel in her weakness went to bed and rose from it no more. The broad dazzle of the sun that had been so soon to rise on her wasted life was shot over with an inky pall of cloud. Not for her was to be the voyage to England. Her boy must go alone.

It was the winter season in that stern land of the north, when night and day so closely commingle that the darkness seems never to lift. And in the silence of that long night Rachel lay in her little hut, sinking rapidly and much alone. Jason came to her from time to time, in his great sea stockings and big gloves and with the odor of the brine in his long red hair. By her bedside he would stand half-an-hour in silence, with eyes full of wonderment; for life like that of an untamed colt was in his own warm limbs, and death was very strange to him. A sudden hemorrhage brought the end, and one day darker than the rest, when Jason hastened home from the boats, the pain and panting of death were there before him. His mother's pallid face lay on her arm, her great dark eyes were glazed already, she was breathing hard and every breath was a spasm. Jason ran for the priest—the same that had named him in his baptism. The good old man came hobbling along, book in hand, and seeing how life flickered he would have sent for the Governor, but Rachel forbade him. He read to her, he sang for her in his crazy cracked voice, he shrived her, and then all being over, as far as human efforts could avail, he sat himself down on a chest, spread his print handkerchief over his knee, took out his snuffbox and waited.

Jason stood with his back to the glow of the peat fire, and his hard set face in the gloom. Never a word came from him, never a sign, never a tear. Only with the strange light in his wild eyes he looked on and listened.

Rachel stirred, and called to him.

"Are you there, Jason?" she said, feebly, and he stepped to her side.

"Closer," she whispered; and he took her cold hand in both his hands, and then her dim eyes knew where to look for his face.

"Good-bye, my brave lad," she said. "I do not fear to leave you. You are strong, you are brave, and the world is kind to them that can fight it. Only to the weak it is cruel—only to the weak and the timid—only to women—only to helpless women sold into the slavery of heartless men."

And then she told him everything—her love, her loyalty, her life. In twenty little words she told the story.

"I gave him all—all. I took a father's curse for him. He struck me—he left me—he forgot me with another woman. Listen—listen—closer still—still closer," she whispered, eagerly, and then she spoke the words that lie at the heart of this history.

"You will be a sailor, and sail to many lands. If you should ever meet your father, remember what your mother has borne from him. If you should never meet him, but should meet his son, remember what your mother has suffered at the hands of his father. Can you hear me? Is my speech too thick? Have you understood me?"

Jason's parched throat was choking, and he did not answer.

"My brave boy, farewell," she said. "Good-bye," she murmured again, more faintly, and after that there was a lull, a pause, a sigh, a long-drawn breath, another sigh, and then over his big brown hands her pallid face fell forward, and the end was come.

For some minutes Jason stood there still in the same impassive silence. Never a tear yet in his great eyes, now wilder than they were; never a cry from his dry throat, now surging hot and athirst; never a sound in his ears, save a dull hum of words like the plash of a breaker that was coming—coming—coming from afar. She was gone who had been everything to him. She had sunk like a wave, and the waves of the ocean were pressing on behind her. She was lost, and the tides of life were flowing as before.

The old pastor shuffled to his feet, mopping his moist eyes with his red handkerchief. "Come away, my son," he said, and tapped Jason on the shoulder.

"Not yet," the lad answered hoarsely. And then he turned with a dazed look and said, like one who speaks in his sleep, "My father has killed my mother."

"No, no, don't say that," said 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