Page:The Bondman; A New Saga (IA bondmannewsaga00cain).djvu/247

 telling of their mean mission, and how she resented it, and what revenge of wicked slander they had wreaked upon her.

"You see it is all an error," she cried; "a cruel, cruel error."

"No Greeba, it is not all an error," he answered. "It is not an error that you have deceived me—and lied to me."

At that word her tears fell back, and the fire of her heart was in her eyes in an instant. "You say that, do you?" she cried. "Ah, then, perhaps there has been yet another error than you think of—the error of throwing him away for sake of you. He is noble, and simple, and true. His brave heart is above all suspicion. God pity him, and forgive me!"

Then for the first time that day since the six Fairbrothers had left the house, the calmness of Michael Sunlocks forsook him, and in a stern voice, with a look of fierce passion in his face, he cried, "Let me never, never meet that man."

the Fairbrothers, in the first days after their coming to Iceland, started inquiries touching the position and influence of Michael Sunlocks, thinking thereby to make sure of their birds in the bush before parting with their bird in the hand, they frequented a little drinking-shop in the Cheapstead where sailors of many nations congregated—Danes, Icelanders, Norwegians, English, and Irish. Hearing there what satisfied their expectations, their pride began to swell, and as often as Michael Sunlocks was named with honour they blew up their breasts like bantams and said he was their brother, so to speak, and had been brought up in the same house with them since he was a slip of a brat of two or three. And if any who heard them glanced them over with doubtful eyes they straightway broke into facetious stories concerning the boyhood of Sunlocks, showing all their wondrous kindness to him as big brothers towards a little one.

Now these trifling events were of grave consequence to the fortunes of the Fairbrothers, and the fate of Michael Sunlocks, at two great moments. The first of the two was when Thurstan broke into open rebellion against Jacob. Then with a sense of his wise brother's pitiable blunderheadedness the astute Thurstan went off to the same drinking-shop to console himself with drink, and there he was addressed, when he was well and comfortably drunk, by a plausible person who spoke an unknown tongue.