.

_Thou shalt do no murder!_

Jason started to his feet. Why was he there? What had he come to do?
He must go. The place was stifling him. In another moment he was
crushing his way out of the Cathedral. He felt like a man sentenced
to death.

Being in the free air again he regained his self-control. "What
madness! It is no murder," he thought. But he could not get back to
his seat, and so he turned to where the crowd was thickest outside.
That was down the line of the pathway to the wide west entrance. As
he approached this point he saw that the people were in high
commotion. He hurried up to them and inquired the cause. The bridal
party had just passed through. At that moment the full swell of the
organ came out through the open doors. The marriage service had
begun.

After a while Jason had so far recovered his composure as to look
about him. Deep as the year had sunk towards winter, the day was
brilliant. The air was so bright that it seemed to ring. The sea in
front of the town smiled under the sunlight; the broad stretch of
lava behind it glistened, the glaciers in the distance sparkled, and
the black jokulls far beyond showed their snowy domes against the
blue sky. Oh, it was one of God's own mornings, when all His earth
looks glad. And the Cathedral yard--for all it slept so full of dead
men's bones--was that day a bright and busy place. Troops of happy
girls were there in their jackets of gray, braided with gold or
silver, and with belts of filigree; troops of young men, too, in
their knee breeches, with bows of red ribbon, their dark-gray
stockings and sealskin shoes; old men as well in their coats of
homespun; and old women in their long blue cloaks; children in their
plaited kirtles, and here and there a traveller with his leather
wallet for his snuff and money. At the entrance gate there was a
triumphal arch of ribbons and evergreens, and under its shadow there
were six men with horns and guns, ready for a salute when the bride
appeared; and in the street outside there was a stall laden with
food and drink for all who should that day come and ask.

Only to Jason was the happy place a Gethsemane, and standing in the
thick of the crowd, on a grave with a sunken roof, under the shadow
of the Cathedral, he listened with a dull ear to the buzz of talk
between two old gossips behind him. He noticed that they were women
with prominent eyeballs, which produced a dreamy, serious,
half-stupid, half-humorous l