once lifted his
eyes to the face of Sunlocks.

Yet each man knew the other's thought before ever a word had passed
between them. Jason felt that Sunlocks already abhorred him, and
Sunlocks knew that Jason was ashamed. This brought them after a time
into sympathy of some sort, and Jason tried to speak and Sunlocks to
listen.

"I did not mean to bring you to this," said Jason, humbly. And
Sunlocks, with head aside, answered as well as he could for the
disgust that choked him, "You did it for the best."

"But you will hate me for it," said Jason.

And once again, with what composure he could command, Sunlocks
answered, "How could I hate you for saving me from such brutal
treatment."

"Then you don't regret it?" said Jason, pleadingly.

"It is for you, not me, to regret it," said Sunlocks.

"Me?" said Jason.

Through all the shameful hours the sense of his own loss had never
yet come to him. From first to last he had thought only of Sunlocks.

"My liberty was gone already," said Sunlocks. "But you were
free--free as anyone can be in this hell on earth. Now you are
bound--you are here like this--and I am the cause of it."

Then Jason's rugged face was suddenly lit up with a surprising joy.
"That's nothing," he said.

"Nothing?" said Sunlocks.

"I mean that I care nothing, if you don't," said Jason.

It was the turn of Sunlocks to feel surprise. He half turned towards
Jason. "Then you don't regret it?" he asked.

"No," said Jason firmly. "And you?"

Sunlocks felt that tears, not disgust, were choking him now.

"No," he answered, shamefacedly, turning his head away.

"March!" shouted the warders, who had been drinking their smuggled
sneps while their prisoners had been talking.

That day, Jorgen Jorgensen went back to Reykjavik, for the time of
Althing was near, and he had to prepare for his fourteen days at
Thingvellir. And the Governor being gone, the Captain of the Mines
made bold so far to relax the inhumanity of his sentence as to order
that the two men who were bound together during the hours of work
should be separated for the hours of sleep. But never forgetting his
own suspicion that Red Jason was an ally of Michael Sunlocks,
planning his escape, he ordered also that no speech should be allowed
to pass between them. To prevent all communion of this kind he
directed that the men should work and sleep apart from the other
prisoners, and that their two warders should attend them night and
day.