Page:The Bondman; A New Saga (IA bondmannewsaga00cain).djvu/79

 and he was gloomy and silent, save when a little petulant cry was wrung from him. But there seemed to be nothing to mock at him there except the echoes of old Cronk na Irey Lhaa, and none to grin at him except the moon, which had lately risen, and looked innocent enough when he faced about on her.

So for a long hour he walked to and fro, blackening his fate and his future; and then suddenly the silence that had been broken by his melancholy footfall only was startled by a trill of merry laughter. Sunlocks knew the voice, for his heart was in his mouth at the first note of it, and from a little window, framed round with honeysuckle just bursting into early bloom, there popped out into the white moonlight the curly brown head of Greeba, and her radiant and beautiful face beaming bright with gaiety and mischief.

Some light banter followed, in which she tendered him a penny for his thoughts, and he answered that she should have them for nothing if she could find him in pleasanter ones instead.

"Why, you never really mean to go?" she said; and he replied that he had no choice. She asked what he was to go for, and he said for study at the Latin school, and he supposed it was meant that he should join the Church.

Then the face in the frame of honeysuckle laughed more merrily than before, and in a tone of mock solemnity began to picture Sunlocks as a parson, with a countenance uncommon grave and a voice like a gawk.

"Oh, you'll be forced to cut your hair," she said, "and wear a black sack coat and a shovel hat."

But by this time the heavy spirit of Sunlocks had regained its wings, and straightway he fell into Greeba's own humour, and joining his melancholy wail with hers, he pictured himself returning to the island after his time in Iceland as vicar of that very parish.

"Ah yes," she moaned, "and I shouldn't wonder but you'll have to marry somebody out of the Dorcas class, and settle down."

"I shouldn't wonder," said Sunlocks.

"Some sulky old frump of a spinster in spectacles, just like Bella Quayle," she said.

"Just," said he sadly.

"What's their religion in Iceland?" she asked sharply.

"Lutheran," he answered.

"And do their parsons hold with confession?"