was clear, the sun was bright, and a dull sound, such as the sea
makes when far away, came up from the plain below. It was a deep
multitudinous hum of many voices. Jason heard it, and his heavy face
lightened with the vividness of a grim joy.

CHAPTER V.

THE MOUNT OF LAWS.

I.

And now, that we may stride on the faster, we must step back a pace
or two. What happened to Greeba after she parted from her father at
Krisuvik, and took up her employment as nurse to the sick prisoners,
we partly know already from the history of Red Jason and Michael
Sunlocks. Accused of unchastity, she was turned away from the
hospital; and suspected of collusion to effect the escape of some
prisoner unrecognized, she was ordered to leave the neighborhood of
the Sulphur Mines. But where her affections are at stake a woman's
wit is more than a match for a man's cunning, and Greeba contrived to
remain at Krisuvik. For her material needs she still had the larger
part of the money that her brothers, in their scheming selfishness,
had brought her, and she had her child to cheer her solitude. It was
a boy, unchristened as yet, save in the secret place of her heart,
where it bore a name that she dare not speak. And if its life was her
shame in the eyes of the good folk who gave her shelter, it was a
dear and sweet dishonor, for well she knew and loved to remember that
one word from her would turn it to glory and to joy.

"If only I dare tell," she would whisper into her babe's ear again
and again. "If I only dare!"

But its father's name she never uttered, and so with pride for her
secret, and honor for her disgrace, she clung the closer to both,
though they were sometimes hard to bear, and she thought a thousand
times they were a loving and true revenge on him that had doubted her
love and told her she had married him for the poor glory of his
place.

Not daring to let herself be seen within range of the Sulphur Mines,
she sought out the prisoner-priest from time to time, where he lived
in the partial liberty of the Free Command, and learned from him such
tidings of her husband as came his way. The good man knew nothing of
the identity of Michael Sunlocks in that world of bondage where all
identity was lost, save that A 25 was the husband of the woman who
waited without. But that was Greeba's sole secret, and the true soul
kept it.

And so the long winter passed, and the summer came, and Greeba was
content to live by the side of