Page:The Bondman; A New Saga (IA bondmannewsaga00cain).djvu/26

 is a small meadow. That night it was inches deep in the year's first fall of snow, but two persons stood together there, close locked in each other's arms——Stephen Orry and the daughter of Jorgen Jorgensen. With the tread of a cat a man crept up behind them. It was the brother of Patriksen. At his back came the Count and the Governor. The snow-cloud lifted, and a white gush of moonlight revealed all. With a cry of a wild beast Jorgen flung himself between his daughter and her lover, leapt at Stephen and struck him hard on the breast, and then, as the girl dropped to her knees at his feet, he cursed her.

"Bastard!" he shrieked, "there's no blood of mine in your body. Go to your filthy offal, and may the devil damn you both."

She stopped her ears to shut out the torrent of a father's curse, but before the flood of it was spent she fell backward cold and senseless, and her upturned face was whiter than the snow. Then her giant lover lifted her in his arms and strode away in silence.

daughter of the Governor-General and the seaman of Stappen were made man and wife, and the little Lutheran priest who married them, Sir Sigfus Thomson, a worthy man and a good Christian, had reason to remember the ceremony. Within a week he was removed from his chaplaincy at the capital to the parsonage of Grimsey, the smallest cure of the Icelandic Church, on an island separated from the mainland by seven Danish miles of sea.

The days that followed brought Rachel no cheer of life. She had thought that her husband would take her away to his home under Snaefell, and so remove her from the scene of her humiliation. He excused himself, saying that Stappen was a poor place, where the great ships never put in to trade, and that there was more chance of livelihood at Reykjavík. Rachel crushed down her shame, and they took a mean little house in the fishing quarter. Stephen did no work. Once he went