Page:The Bondman; A New Saga (IA bondmannewsaga00cain).djvu/322

 "Good man," said he, "put me on the right path for Reykjavík, and you shall have five crowns, and welcome."

But scarcely had he spoken when he recognised the man he had met, and the man recognised him. The one was Jason, and the other Jorgen Jorgensen.

Jorgen Jorgensen thought his hour had come for putting his hand to his weapon, he remembered that he had not reloaded it since he shot at Jason, and so he flung it away. But the old tiger was not to be subdued. "Come," he said, "let us have done. What is it to be?"

And at first a cry of savage triumph came up out of the depths of Jason's heart, for he believed that with his own hands he was now to slay this man. "I am stronger than he is," thought Jason, "but my right arm is useless, and that makes us equals."

But at the next instant something smote him, and he stepped back and said, "That is the way to Reykjavík—over the stream and through the first chasm on the left."

At this Jorgen Jorgensen seemed to catch his breath, for he tried to speak and could not.

"No," said Jason. "It may be weakness, it may be folly, it may be madness, but you were my mother's father, God pity her and forgive you, and not even at the price of my brother's life will I have your blood on my hands. Go."

Jorgen Jorgensen touched his horse and rode on, with his grey, dishonoured head deep in his breast. And, evil man as he was, surely his cold heart was smitten with shame.

Althing was held in Iceland in that year of the great eruption of Skaptar. The dread visitation lasted six long months, from the end of June to the beginning of January of the year following. During that time the people of the south and south-east, who had been made homeless and penniless, were constantly trooping into Reykjavík in hundreds and tens of hundreds. The population of the capital rose from less than two thousand to more than twenty thousand. Where so many were housed no man ever knew, and how they lived none can say. Every hut, every hovel, every hole was full of human beings. Men, women, and children crawled like vermin in