Page:The Bondman; A New Saga (IA bondmannewsaga00cain).djvu/269

 So Greeba, under some assumed name, unknown to the contingent of Danish officers fresh from Denmark, who had that day taken the places of the Icelandic guards, and recognisable in her true character by two men only in Krisuvik, Michael Sunlocks and Red Jason, if ever they should see her, took up her employment as hospital nurse to the sick prisoners of the sulphur-mines.

But having attained her end, or the first part of it, her heart was torn by many conflicting feelings. Would she meet with her husband? Would he come to be in her own charge? Oh, God forbid that it should ever come to pass. Yet, God grant it, too, for that might help him to a swifter release than her dear old father could compass. Would she see Red Jason? Would Michael Sunlocks ever see him? Oh! God forbid that also. And yet, and yet, God grant it, after all.

Such were her hopes and fears, when the hospital shed was finished, and she took her place within it. And now let us see how Heaven fulfilled them.

and Michael Sunlocks were together at last, within the narrow stockade of a penal settlement. These two, who had followed each other from land to land, the one on his errand of vengeance, the other on his mission of mercy, both now nourishing hatred and lust of blood, were thrown as prisoners into the sulphur-mines of Krisuvik. There they met, they spoke, they lived and worked side by side, yet neither knew the other for the man he had sought so long and never found. This is the strange and wondrous chance that has now to be recorded, and only to think of it, whether as accident or God's ordinance, makes the blood to tingle in every vein. Poor and petty are the passions of man, and God's hand is over all.

The only work of Michael Sunlocks which Jorgen Jorgensen did not undo in the swift reprisals which followed on the restoration of his power was the use of the sulphur-mines as a convict settlement. All he did was to substitute Danish for Icelandic guards, but this change was the beginning and end of the great event that followed. The Icelandic guards knew Red Jason, and if Michael Sunlocks had been sent out to them they would