nd, she
found it another disaster now, in the dear inconsistency of
womanhood, that he should die on the eve of regaining his sight.

"He will never see his boy," she thought, "never, never, never now."

Yet she could hardly believe it true that the cruel chance could
befall. What good would the death of Sunlocks do to anyone? What evil
did it bring to any creature that he was alive on that rock at the
farthest ends of the earth and sea? Blind, too, and helpless,
degraded from his high place, his young life wrecked, and his noble
gifts wasted! There must have been some mistake. She would go out to
the ship and ask if it was not so.

And with such wild thoughts she hurried off to the little village at
the edge of the bay. There she stood a long hour by the fisherman's
jetty, looking wistfully out to where the sloop of war lay, like a
big wooden tub, between gloomy sea and gloomy sky, and her spirit
failed her, and though she had borrowed a boat she could go no
further.

"They might laugh at me, and make a jest of me," she thought, "for I
cannot tell them that I am his wife."

With that, she went her way back as she came, crying on the good
powers above to tell her what to do next, and where to look for help.
And entering in at the porch of her own apartments, which stood aside
from the body of the house, she heard voices within, and stopped to
listen. At first she thought they were the voices of her child and
her husband; but though one of them was that of little Michael, the
other was too deep, too strong, too sad for the voice of Sunlocks.

"And so your name is Michael, my brave boy. Michael! Michael!" said
the voice, and it was strange and yet familiar. "And how like you are
to your mother, too! How like! How very like!" And the voice seemed
to break in the speaker's throat.

Greeba grew dizzy, and stumbled forward. And, as she entered the
house, a man rose from the settle, put little Michael to the ground,
and faced about to her. The man was Jason.

CHAPTER VII.

THE GOSPEL OF RENUNCIATION.

I.

What had happened in the great world during the two years in which
Michael Sunlocks had been out of it is very simple and easily told.
Old Adam Fairbrother had failed at London as he had failed at
Copenhagen, and all the good that had come of his efforts had ended
in evil. It was then that accident helped him in his despair.

The relations of England and Denmark had long been doubtful, for
France seem