he lonesomeness of his years,
and that life was slipping past him without the love and tenderness
of a child to sweeten it. So partly out of remorse, but mainly out of
selfishness, he had set out to find the son whom his daughter had
left behind her, thinking to give the boy the rightful place of a
grandson by his side. It was then that on the same search our paths
converged, and Jorgen Jorgensen met with me, and I with Jorgen
Jorgensen. And when the news reached Reykjavik of the body that had
come out of the sea at Engy, the Governor was among the first to give
credence to the rumor that the son of his daughter was dead. But
meantime he had found something in me to interest him, and now he
asked who I was, and what, and why I was come. His questions I
answered plainly, without concealment or any disguise, and when he
heard that I was the son of Stephen Orry, though he knew too well
what my father had been to him and to his daughter (all of which,
dear Greeba, you shall yet learn at length), he asked me to take that
place in his house that he had intended for his daughter's son.

"How I came to agree to this while I distrusted him and almost feared
him would take too long to tell. Only remember that I was in a
country foreign to me, though it was my father's home, that I was
trifling with my errand there, and had no solid business of life
beside. Enough for the present that I did so agree, and that I became
the housemate and daily companion of Jorgen Jorgensen. His treatment
of me varied with his moods, which were many. Sometimes it was harsh,
sometimes almost genial, and always selfish. I think I worked for him
as a loyal servant should, taking no account of his promises, and
never shutting my eyes to my true position or his real aims in having
me. And often and again when I remembered all that we both knew of
what had gone before, I thought the Fates themselves must shriek at
the turn of fortune's wheel that had thrown this man and me together
so.

"I say he was selfish; and truly he did all he could in the years I
was with him to drain me of my best strength of heart and brain,
but some of his selfish ends seemed to lie in the way of my own
advancement. Thus he had set his mind on my succeeding him in the
governorship, or at least becoming Speaker, and to that end he had me
elected to Althing, a legislative body very like to the House of
Keys. Violating thereby more than one regulation touching my age,
nationality