le green island, the time has seemed
to fly more swiftly than a weaver's shuttle, and I have been immersed
in many interests and beset by many anxieties. But I well know that
nothing can quite excuse me, and I would wrong the truth if I were to
say that among fresh scenes and fresh faces I have borne about me
day and night the memory of all I left behind. So I shall not pretend
to a loyalty whereof I have given you no assurance, but will just
pray of you to take me for what I truly am--a rather thankless
fellow--who has sometimes found himself in danger of forgetting old
friends in the making of new ones, and been very heartily ashamed of
himself. Nevertheless, the sweetest thoughts of these four years have
been thoughts of the old home, and the dearest hope of my heart has
been to return to it some day. That day has not yet come; but it is
coming, and now I seem to see it very near. So, dear Greeba, forgive
me if you can, or at least bear me no grudge, and let me tell you of
some of the strange things that have befallen me since we parted.

"When I came to Iceland it was not to join the Latin school of the
venerable Bishop Petersen (a worthy man and good Christian, whom it
has become by happiness to call my friend), but on an errand of
mercy, whereof I may yet say much but can tell you little now. The
first of my duties was to find a good woman and true wife who had
suffered deeply by the great fault of another, and, having found her,
to succor her in her distress. It says much for the depth of her
misfortunes that, though she had been the daughter of the
Governor-General, and the inhabitants of the capital of Iceland are
fewer than two thousand in all, I was more than a week in Reykjavik
before I came upon any real news of her. When I found her at last she
was in her grave. The poor soul had died within two months of my
landing on these shores, and the joiner of the cathedral was putting
a little wooden peg, inscribed with the initials of her name, over
her grave in the forgotten quarter of the cemetery where the dead
poor of this place are buried. Such was the close of the first
chapter of my quest.

"But I had still another duty, and, touched by the pathos of that
timeless death, I set about it with new vigor. This was to learn if
the unhappy soul had left a child behind her, and if she had done so
to look for it as I had looked for its mother, and succor it as I
would have succored her. I found that she had left