hat men might meet in
the stores, the drinking-shops, and on the Cheapstead and ask, "Why?"
"Wherefore?" and "What does it mean?" That some event of great moment
was pending seemed to be the common opinion everywhere, though what
ground it rested on no one knew, for no one knew anything. Only on
one point was the feeling more general, or nearer right; that the
President himself was at the root and centre of whatever was coming.

Before nightfall this vague sentiment, which ever hovers, like a dark
cloud over a nation when a storm is near to breaking upon it, had
filled every house in the capital, so that when the hour was come for
the gathering of Althing the streets were thronged. Tow-headed
children in goatskin caps ran here and there, women stood at the
doors of houses, young girls leaned out of windows in spite of the
cold, sailors and fishermen with pipes between their lips and their
hands deep in their pockets lounged in grave silence outside the
taverns, and old men stood under the open lamps by the street corners
and chewed and snuffed to keep themselves warm.

In the neighborhood of the wooden senate-house on the High Street the
throng was densest, and such of the members as came afoot had to
crush their ways to the door. All the space within that had been
allotted to the public was filled as soon as stammering Jon opened
the side door. When no more room was left the side door was closed
again and locked, and it was afterwards remembered, when people had
time to put their heads together, that long Jon was there and then
seen to pass the key of this side door to one of the six English
strangers who had lately come to the town. That stranger was Thurstan
Fairbrother.

The time of waiting before the proceedings commenced was passed by
those within the Senate House in snuff-taking and sneezing and
coughing, and a low buzz of conversation, full of solemn conjecture.

The members came in twos and threes, and every fresh comer was
quizzed for a hint of the secret of the night. But grave and silent,
when taken together, with the gravity and solemnity of so many oxen,
and some of the oxen's sullen stupidity, were the faces both of
members and spectators. Yet among both were faces that told of amused
unbelief; calculating spirits that seemed to say that all this
excitement was a bubble and would presently burst like one; sapient
souls who, when the world is dead, will believe in no judgment until
they hear the last