Page:The Bondman; A New Saga (IA bondmannewsaga00cain).djvu/78

 about from the fire and said, "Listen, and you shall hear what your father has done for you."

And then, with a brave show of composure, though many a time his old face twitched and his voice faltered, and under his bleared spectacles his eyes blinked, he told Michael Sunlocks the story of his infancy—how his father, a rude man, little used to ways of tenderness, had nursed him when his mother, being drunken and without natural feelings, had neglected him; how his father had tried to carry him away, and failed for want of the licence allowing them to go; how at length, in dread of what might come to the child, yet loving him fondly, he had concluded to kill him, and had taken him out to sea in a boat to do it, but could not compass it from terror of the voice that seemed to speak within him, and from pity of the child's artless prattle; and last of all, how his father had brought him there to that house, not abandoning him to the charity of others, but yielding him up reluctantly, and as one who gave away in solemn trust the sole thing he held dear in all the world.

And pleading in this way for Stephen Orry, poor old Adam was tearing at his own heart woefully, little desiring that his words would prevail, yet urging them the more for the secret hope that, in spite of all, Michael Sunlocks, like the brave lad he was, would after all refuse to go. But Michael, who had listened impatiently at first, tramping the room to and fro, paused presently, and his eyes began to fill and his hands to tremble. So that when Adam, having ended, said, "Now, will you not go to Iceland?" thinking in his heart that the lad would fling his arms about him and cry, "No, no, never, never," and he himself would then answer, "My boy, my boy, you shall stay here, you shall stay here," Michael Sunlocks, his heart swelling and his eyes glistening with a great new pride and tenderness, said softly, "Yes, yes—for a father like that I would cross the world."

Adam Fairbrother said never a word more. He blew out the candle that shone on his race, sat down before the fire, and through three hours thereafter smoked in silence.

But for all the powerful advocacy that had raised the pity of Sunlocks, and persuaded him that he ought to go to Iceland, some furtive instinct of boyhood still prompted him to rebel. Hardly knowing yet what this strife in his young blood could be, he went out of the house, and paced the gravel-walk at the western end of it. His step was heavy for so light a foot,