f any kind from the Government at Copenhagen, and satisfying himself
on this point, and thinking for the fiftieth time that surely Denmark
intended, as she ought, to leave the people of world-old Iceland to
govern themselves, he turned with a sigh of relief to the strange,
bewildering, humorous, pathetic hodge-podge of petitions, complaints,
requests, demands and threats that came from every quarter of the
island itself. And while he laughed and looked grave, and muttered,
and made louder exclamations over these, as one by one they passed
under his eye, suddenly the notes of a harpsichord, followed shortly
by the sweeter notes of a sweet voice, came to him from another room,
and with the tip of his pen to his lips, he dropped back in his chair
to listen.

"My own song," he thought, and his eyelids quivered.

"Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine.
Oh, leave a kiss within the cup,
And I'll not ask for wine;
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine;
But might I of Jove's nectar sup
I would not change for thine."

It was Greeba singing to him as he had bidden her.

"God bless her," he thought again in the silence that followed.

Ah, little did he think as he listened to her song that the eyes of
the singer were wet, and that her heart was eating itself out with
fears.

"What have I done to deserve such happiness?" he asked himself. But
just as it happens that at the moment when our passionate joy becomes
conscious of itself we find some dark misgivings creep over us of
evil about to befall, so the bounding gladsomeness of Michael
Sunlocks was followed by a chill dread that he tried to put aside
and could not.

It was at that moment that the Lagmann entered the room. He was very
tall and slight, and had a large head that drooped like daffodil. His
dress was poor, he was short-sighted, growing elderly, and silent of
manner. Nothing in his appearance or bearing would have suggested
that he had any pride of his place as Judge of the island. He was a
bookworm, a student, a scholar, and learned in the old sagas and
eddas.

"Lagmann," said Michael Sunlocks, with simple deference. "I have sent
for you on a subject of some moment to myself."

"Name it!" said the Judge.

"During my absence a man has been tried and condemned by the Bishop's
court for threatening my life," said Michael Sunlocks.

"Jason, the son of Stephen Orry and