Page:The Bondman; A New Saga (IA bondmannewsaga00cain).djvu/46

 his bed, took a dark lantern and went back to the stable-loft, aroused the Icelander and motioned him to follow. They crossed the paved courtyard and came in front of the window. Adam pointed, and the man looked in. The four blue-jackets were lying on the benches drawn round the fire, and the dull glow of the slumbering peat was on their faces. They were asleep. At that sight the man's eyes flashed, his mouth set hard, the muscles of his cheeks contracted, and with a hoarse cry in his throat, he fumbled at the haft of the seaman's knife that hung in his belt, and made one step forward.

But Adam, laying hold of his arm, looked into his eyes steadfastly, and in the light of the lantern their wild glance fell before him. At the next instant the man was gone.

The night was now far spent. In the town the forts were silent, the streets quiet, the market-place vacant, and on the hill-tops the fires had smouldered down. By daybreak next morning the blue-jackets had gone back empty to Ramsey, and by sunrise the English brig had sailed out of the bay.

Two beautiful creeks lie to the south of Ramsey and north of Maughold Head. One is called Lague, the other Port-y-Vullin. On the shore of Port-y-Vullin there is a hut built of peat and thatched with broom—dark, damp, boggy, and ruinous, a ditch where the tenant is allowed to sit rent free. The sun stood high when a woman, coming out of this place, found a man sleeping in a broken-ribbed boat that lay side down on the beach. She awakened him, and asked him into her hut. He rose to his feet and followed her. Last night he had been turned out of the best house in the island; this morning he was about to be received into the worst.

The woman was 'Liza Killey—the slut, the trollop, the trull, the slattern and drab of the island.

The man was Stephen Orry.

month only had then passed since Stephen Orry's flight from Iceland, and the story of his fortunes in the meantime is quickly told. In shame of his brutal blow, as well as fear of his wife's threat, he had stowed away in the hold of an English