"Now, God save us! what can this mean?" cried Adam; and though with
the lame help of his "old Manx" he questioned as well as he was able
the men who were at work at the building of the hospital, nothing
could he learn but one thing, and that was the strange and wondrous
chance that his own eyes revealed to him: namely, that the last face
he saw as he was leaving Mann, on that bad night when he stole away
from Greeba while she slept, was the first face he had seen to know
it since he set foot on Iceland.

Nor was this surprise the only one that lay waiting for him in that
gaunt place. Pushing on towards Reykjavik, the quicker for this sight
of Red Jason, and with many troubled thoughts of Michael Sunlocks,
Adam came with his company to the foot of the mountain that has to be
crossed before the lava plain is reached which leads to the capital.
And there the narrow pass was blocked to them for half-an-hour of
precious time by a long train of men and ponies coming down the
bridle path. They were Danes, to the number of fifty at least,
mounted on as many horses, and with a score of tired horses driven on
ahead of them. What their work and mission was in that grim waste
Adam could not learn until he saw that the foremost of the troop had
drawn up at one of the two wooden sheds, and then he gathered from
many signs that they were there as warders to take charge of the
settlement in place of the Icelandic officers who had hitherto held
possession of it.

Little time he had, however, to learn the riddle of these strange
doings, or get knowledge of the double rupture of state of affairs
that had caused them, for presently old Chalse came hurrying back to
him from some distance ahead, with a scared face and stammering
tongue, and one nervous hand pointing upwards to where the last of
the men and horses were coming down the bridle path.

"Lord-a-massy, who's this," cried Chalse; and following the direction
of his hand Adam saw what the old fellow pointed at, and the sight
seemed to freeze the blood at his heart.

It was Michael Sunlocks riding between two of the Danish warders as
their prisoner, silent, fettered and bound.

Then Adam felt as if he had somewhere fallen into a long sleep, and
was now awakening to a new life in a new world, where the people were
the same as in the old one but everything about them was strange and
terrible. But he recovered from his terror as Michael Sunlocks came
on, and he called to him, and S