ould never hurt a fly.

He had hailed a passing boat to run him ashore, and it was one of the
light skiffs with the double prow that the boys of Iceland use when
they hunt among the rocks for the eggs and down of the eider duck.
Such, indeed though so late in the season, had that day been the work
of the two lads whose boat he had chanced upon, and having dropped
down to their side from the whaler with his few belongings--his long
coat of Manx homespun over his arm, his seaman's boots across his
shoulders, his English fowling piece in his hand and his pistol in
his belt--he began to talk with them of their calling as one who knew
it.

"Where have you been working, my lads?" said Jason.

"Out on Engy," said the elder of the boys.

"Found much?"

"Not to-day."

"Who cleans it?"

"Mother."

And at that a frown passed over Jason's face in the darkness. The
boys were thinly clad, both were barelegged and barefooted. Plainly
they were brothers, one of them being less than twelve years of age,
and the other as young as nine.

"What's your father?"

"Father's dead," said the lad.

"Where do you live with your mother?"

"Down on the shore yonder, below the silversmith's."

"The little house behind the Missions, in front of the vats?"

"Yes, sir, do you know it?"

"I was born in it, my lad," said Jason sadly, and he thought to
himself, "Then the old mother is dead."

But he also thought of his own mother, and her long years of worse
than widowhood. "All that has yet to be paid for," he told himself
with a cold shudder, and then he remembered that he had just revealed
himself.

"See, my lads," he said, "here is a crown for you, and say nothing of
who gave it you."

The little Icelandic capital twinkled low at the water's edge, and as
they came near to it Jason saw that there was a flare of torchlights
and open fires, with dark figures moving busily before the glow where
he looked for the merchant stores that had faced the sea.

"What's this?" he asked.

"The fort that the new Governor is throwing up," said the boy.

Then through a number of smacks, some schooners, a brig, a coal hulk
and many small boats, they ran in at the little wooden jetty that
forked out over a reef of low rocks. And there some idlers who sat on
casks under the lamp, with their hands in their pockets and their
skin caps squashed down on their foreheads seemed to recognize Jason
as he landed.

"Lord bless me," said one, with a l