Ormarr began to play, without watching the other’s face. He did not see how the man’s expression changed from mere resignation to intense feeling, that drove all the blood from his face. Now and again he frowned, and started slightly, but repressed himself, and left Ormarr to finish at his will.
Ormarr played for ten minutes. At the last stroke of the bow, Grahl leapt to his feet.
“Yes, yes, but where did you get hold of it—the tune?”
Grahl stared at him, but the boy never flinched. No, those eyes could not lie!
“There’s all the songs they used to sing at home. And the hymns from church.”
“No; I was never taught.” Ormarr felt crushed at the confession.
For fully a quarter of an hour he was kept in suspense; it was like waiting for the summons to execution.
Abel Grahl walked up and down. Now and again he stopped full in front of the boy, scrutinizing him from head to foot. Then he shook his head as if in dismissal, turned away abruptly, and stood for a while at the window, whistling softly to himself; came back and stared at Ormarr once more, looking hard into the dark, glowing eyes that seemed to have grown dim. Who could say how much it might mean to this lad if he sent him away? He felt, too, that those eyes could express something more than despair.
He felt himself drawn toward this child of nature who had been flung at him, at it were, like a ball, from hundreds of miles away—if he did not take it but threw it back, would it land safely, or would it be lost in the sea?
At last he spoke, though he had not yet made up his mind.
“It is a difficult thing to study—and it means years of work. Also, it will cost a great deal of money. Where are you to get that from?”
“Yes. No one in Iceland has more than three thousand sheep. He has more than any one else there.”
“Sheep—I see. A biggish place, then. Many horses?”
“I don’t know how many exactly. There are many—_stodhross_.”
“Horses that live out on the hills. But we’ve a hundred and twenty at home, on the place.”
“Do you know any one here in Copenhagen?”
“No. But the priest, he gave me a letter to a man I was to ask to keep my money for me, if you did not care to be troubled with it.”
“I have a thousand Kroner in my pocket-book, and a few small notes in my purse.”