. He had been young then, and since his life had been cut in
twain he had fallen into some excesses. Thus it had often happened
that when his people came to church over miles of their trackless
country he had been too drunk to go through with it, and sometimes
when they wished to make sure of him for a wedding or a christening,
they had been compelled to decoy him into his house over night and
lock him up until morning. Now he was elderly and lived alone, save
for a fractious old man-servant, in a straggling old moss-covered
house, or group of houses. He was weak of will, timid as a deer, and
infirm of purpose, yet he was beloved by all men and pitied by all
women for his sweet simplicity, whereof anyone might take advantage,
and for the tenderness that could never resist a story of distress.

The coming of Michael Sunlocks startled him out of his tipsy sleep of
a quarter of a century, and his whole household was put into a wild
turmoil. In the midst of it, when he was at his wit's end to know
what to do for his prisoner-guest, a woman, a stranger to Grimsey,
carrying a child in her arms, presented herself at his door. She was
young and comely, poorly but not meanly clad, and she offered herself
to the priest as his servant. Her story was simple, touching, and
plausible. She had lately lost her husband, an Icelander, though she
herself was a foreigner, as her speech might tell. And hearing at
Husavik that the priest of Grimsey was a lone old gentleman without
kith or kin or belongings, she had bethought herself to come and say
that she would be glad to take service from him for the sake of the
home he might offer her.

It was Greeba, and simple old Sir Sigfus fell an easy prey to her
woman's wit. He wiped his rheumy eyes while she told her story, and
straightway sent her into the kitchen. Only one condition he made
with her, and that was that she was to bear herself in his house as
Iceland women bear themselves in the houses of Iceland masters. No
more than that and no less. She was to keep to her own apartments
and never allow herself to be seen or heard by a guest that was
henceforth to live with him. That good man was blind, and would
trouble her but little, for he had seen sorrow, poor soul, and was
very silent.

Greeba consented to this with all earnestness, for it fell straight
in the way of her own designs. But with a true woman's innocent
duplicity she showed modesty and said "He shall never know that I'm
in