let
him send me away; let him bury me at his mines. But I shall live to
find him yet. Something tells me that I shall not die until I have
met with that man face to face."

And Greeba went back home with these mad words ringing in her ears.
"It is useless to try," she thought, "I have done all I can. My
husband is before everything. I shall say nothing to him now."

None the less she cried very bitterly, and was still crying when at
bedtime her little English maid came up to her and chattered of the
news of the day. It seemed that some Danish store-keepers on the
cheapstead had lately been arrested as spies, brought to trial, and
condemned.

When Greeba awoke next morning, after a restless night, while the
town still lay asleep, and only the croak of the ravens from the
rocks above the fiord broke the silence of the late dawn, she heard
the hollow tread of many footsteps on the frozen snow of the
Thingvellir road, and peering out through the window, which was
coated with hoar frost, she saw a melancholy procession. Three men,
sparsely clad in thin tunics, snow stockings and skin caps, walked
heavily in file, chained together hand to hand and leg to leg, with
four armed warders, closely muffled to the ears, riding leisurely
beside them. They were prisoners bound for the sulphur mines of
Krisuvik. The first of them was Jason, and he swung along with his
long stride and his shorn head thrown back and his pallid face held
up. The other two were old Thomsen and young Polvesen, the Danish
store-keepers.

It was more than Greeba could bear to look upon that sight, for it
brought back the memory of that other sight on that other morning,
when Jason came leaping down to her from the mountains, over gorse
and cushag and hedge and ditch. So she turned her head away and
covered her eyes with her hands. And then one--two--three--four--the
heavy footsteps went on over the snow.

The next thing she knew was that her English maid was in her bedroom,
saying, "Some strangers in the kitchen are asking for you. They are
Englishmen, and have just come ashore, and they call themselves your
brothers."

CHAPTER X.

THE FAIRBROTHERS.

Now when the Fairbrothers concluded that they could never give rest
to their tender consciences until they had done right by their poor
sister Greeba they set themselves straightway to consider the ways
and means. Ballacraine they must sell in order that its proceeds
might be taken to Greeba