Page:The Bondman; A New Saga (IA bondmannewsaga00cain).djvu/76

 to be the day before Good Friday, and it was only three days afterwards that Adam sent for Michael Sunlocks to see him in his room.

Sunlocks obeyed, and found a strange man with the Governor. The stranger was of more than middle age, rough of dress, bearded, tanned, of long flaxen hair, an ungainly but colossal creature. When they came face to face, the face of Michael Sunlocks fell, and that of the man lightened visibly.

"This is your son, Stephen Orry," said old Adam, in a voice that trembled and broke. "And this is your father, Michael Sunlocks."

Then Stephen Orry, with a depth of languor in his slow grey eyes, made one step towards Michael Sunlocks, and half opened his arms as if to embrace him. But a pitiful look of shame crossed his face at that moment, and his arms fell again. At the same instant Michael Sunlocks, growing very pale and dizzy, drew slightly back, and they stood apart, with Adam between them.

"He has come for you to go away into his own country," Adam said falteringly.

It was Easter-Day, nineteen years after Stephen Orry had fled from Iceland.

story was soon told. He desired that his son, being now of an age that suited it, should go to the Latin school at Reykjavík, to study there under old Bishop John, a good man whom all Icelanders venerated and he himself had known from his childhood. He could bear the expense of it, and saying so he hung his head a little. An Irish brig, hailing from Belfast, and bound for Reykjavík, was to put in at Ramsey on the Saturday following. By that brig he wished his son to sail. He should be back at the little house in Port-y-Vullin between this and then, and he desired to see his son there, having something of consequence to say to him. That was all. Fumbling his cap, the great creature shambled out, and was gone before the others were aware.

Then Michael Sunlocks declared stoutly that, come what