Page:The Bondman; A New Saga (IA bondmannewsaga00cain).djvu/83

 lived her shameful life and died her dishonoured death there, found the gall again in his throat.

"I have something that I shall have say to you," said Stephen Orry, "but I cannot well speak English. Not all the years through I never shall have learn it." And then, as if by a sudden thought, he spoke six words in his native Icelandic, and glanced quickly into the face of Michael Sunlocks.

At the next instant the great rude fellow was crying like a child. He had seen that Michael understood him. And Michael, on his part, seemed at the sound of those words to find something melt at his heart, something fall from his eyes.

"Call me Michael," he said once more. "I am your son;" and then they talked together, Stephen Orry in the Icelandic, Michael Sunlocks in English.

"I've not been a good father to you, Michael, never coming to see you all these years. But I wanted you to grow up a better man than your father before you. A man may be bad, but he doesn't like his son to feel ashamed of him. And I was afraid to see it in your face, Michael. That's why I stayed away. But many a time I felt hungry after my little lad, that I loved so dear and nursed so long, like any mother might. And hearing of him sometimes, and how well he looked and how tall he grew, maybe I didn't think the less about him for not coming down upon him to shame him."

"Stop, father, stop," said Michael Sunlocks.

"My son," said Stephen Orry," you are going back to your father's country. It's nineteen years since he left it, and he hadn't lived a good life there. You'll meet many a one your father knew, and maybe some your father did wrong by. He can't undo the bad work now. There's a sort of wrongdoing there's no mending once it's done, and that's the sort his was. It was against a woman. Some people seem to be sent into this world to be punished for the sins of others. Women are mostly that way, though there are those that are not; but she was one of them. It'll be made up to them in the other world; and if she has gone there, she has taken some of my sins along with her own—if she had any, and I never heard tell of any. But if she is in this world still, perhaps it can be partly made up to her here. Only it is not for me to do it, seeing what has happened since. Michael, that's why you are going to my country now."

"Tell me everything," said Michael.

Then Stephen Orry, his deep voice breaking and his grey 4em