No indictment was ever returned by a grand jury. The company had done some advertizing for the Lackawanna, just enough so that what might have seemed fraud began to look merely like a rather disadvantageous business deal on the part of the Lackawanna.

Not knowing that, it occurred to me that I might have waited too long. Other apostate captains of industry had made that mistake, and had been frog-marched away when about to mount the gangway of a ship. In something like a panic, I gave all my possessions to John Henry, but told him to claim them only after my safe arrival in Iceland. It was given out at the office that I was going out on a tour of inspection, and would be back in a week's time. I thanked God that I had kept my passport current.

John Henry, Odie, Mavis, and Atwater were there to see us off in the early morning, before first light. It was, for me at any rate, a dramatic occasion. No one else was around, and, as my cars were, for the last time, coupled on to a freight, I felt as if I was undertaking a mission into the unknown. At the last moment, Atwater grasped my hand warmly. I knew that he could hardly have approved of my activities, but I also knew that he had always liked me.

Once aboard, Vignis had hardly sat down before she looked around the car and said,

"My, what colors! I must have thought I was decorating a bordello."

"You said at the time that you wanted it to be bright and cheery and cozy. I've always found it to be exactly that, and there've been times when I needed all the brightness and cheeriness and coziness I could get."

Vignis replied,

"I do remember when I went around thinking that things were stodgy. Have I become stodgy and middle-aged myself? I do have a few gray hairs."

"You're not so different from when I first met you. You hardly look any different at all."

"It's true that I haven't gained any weight. But I bet I've changed inside."

"Well, when I met you, your main problem consisted in trying to be elegant on five dollars a week. You succeeded, too. You also had a difficult father. But you didn't have many responsibilities, or any power to speak of. Those things have certainly changed."

"Yes. The cares of the world have descended on me. But I'm glad they have. When I was a girl, I might have seemed light- hearted and carefree, but I was really walking a tightrope all the time. To be frank, it's been much easier since Daddy died."

Since we were the last car on the train, conversation between us ceased when the pusher engine bellowed and whammed its bulk forward into us. As if by mutual agreement, we went back and stood on the observation platform which had so impressed Vignis when she had first seen it in the Scranton shops.

There, only a few feet from the massive cylinders of a 2-10-2, we watched as it surged against our coupler. Exhaust steam, still at considerable pressure, exploded out of the blast pipe, sucked smoke out of the fire-box, and flung it a hundred feet in the air.

There was a man standing facing us on the pilot of the pusher, ready to uncouple when we reached speed. I suppose he must have known who both of us were, and, following his eyes, I saw that Vignis' skirt was being lifted above her knees by the suction of the exhaust above us. She seemed to be unaware of that fact and exchanged a few words with the man. Then, when we picked up a little speed and the blasts came closer together, we could only smile stupidly at him.

I still had the speedometer rigged to the rail of the car, and, when we reached twenty one, we heard a whistle from the turbine engine up ahead. The man in front of us uncoupled, and the pusher drifted back. Vignis and I waved and went inside to the relative quiet, where we could hear only the clicks of the wheels.

We would stop at Erie Point in the northwestern corner of Pennsylvania to be put on a new train, and would then be taken to New York Point. Finally, late at night, we would be brought back to Scranton, where we would visit Vignis' mother. After a couple of days there, we would journey to Boston and get aboard a ship for Iceland.

The journey wasn't the first Vignis and I had taken together, and we never seemed to lack for anything to talk about. Vignis was full of the other world on the eastern side of the Atlantic, and she mentioned various adventures she had had with Sidonie, particularly in Paris. None of these involved men, and I quickly realized that none would. That is, she had either promised Sidonie not to tell me about any romantic involvements on the part of Sidonie, or had decided not to on her own. Thus, while she had had an exciting time being guided around Paris by Sidonie, she didn't even mention Mac. I asked,

"Did you always leave Mac back at the hotel?"

Vignis looked a little embarrassed, but replied,

"Oh no, he often came along. But, really, I think we had more fun when he didn't."

Vignis had often spoken that way, but I also thought that she might find it difficult to mention Mac's part in these outings without mentioning other men who might have participated.

Even before we had crossed the Ohio line, I had convinced Vignis, without directly saying so, that I wouldn't press her. After that, her slight nervousness disappeared and we acted as if we were playing hooky from school.

When we arrived at Scranton, a series of maneuvers were executed which convenienced us greatly. I suspected Odie or John Henry of having arranged it with the operating people at Scranton. The first indication came when the train slowed to about thirty miles an hour, the last thing a turbine engine would ordinarily do. Then, before I realized what had happened, we had been slipped and were rolling free. It was a tricky procedure explicitly prohibited by the rules, but I knew that there would be a man up ahead at a switch, ready to throw it when the train passed and divert us into a siding.

As it happened, we slid smoothly off the main line, and, with the application of the hand brakes up ahead, were brought to an easy stop in one of the old Lackawanna yards. When we alighted in the dusk, I found Captain Walter Beach, USN ret., waiting to greet us. He was the new commander at New York Point, some hundred miles away, and had come up to oversee our arrival. I had seen Beach often over the years, liking him without ever being really intimate, and was genuinely surprised to see him. After he had put us in a car, Vignis said,

"That was nice. I think these men are saying goodbye to someone they know as a fine railwayman, and they don't give a damn what's being said about him."

I supposed that what she said must be true, but remained silent for some minutes.

The unsanctioned maneuver had saved us at least three hours, and the streets of the city were still busy. At one point, a crowd was gathered outside a movie house, some going in and others coming out. Later, our driver took us past the store where Vignis had worked and I had first met her. A drunk was staggering past the doorway and she remarked,

"We've come a way since then."

That was also true, certainly for her, but also for myself. I was now comparatively wealthy, and, as long as I remained out of jail, I could live in whatever way I wanted.

As regards the possibility of jail, the sojourn in Scranton was something of an adventure. The investigation of my activities as president of the Lackawanna was taking place there, and there were, in town, quite a number of people who would have welcomed the opportunity to talk with me. Fortunately, those gentlemen would be unlikely to recognize me from the grainy newspaper photographs, and, of course, I had no real reason to leave the safety of Vignis' mother's house. Still, there was a feeling of risk, as if, having decided to play hooky, I had returned to the neighborhood of the school to snoop around.

Vignis' mother was prepared to wait up for her, and was surprised and delighted to see us so early. After an effusive greeting for her daughter, she was kind enough to say that she remembered me from the wedding. Of course, she had been reading about me in the papers recently, but Vignis had assured me that it would be all right. It was. I guessed that Vignis had told her mother that the stories were fabrications, and that her mother had pretended to believe her.

These things apparently forgotten, we sat down at the kitchen table for coffee and cake. Vignis' mother, Gudrun, was hardly like her daughter at all. Small and dark, and pretty in an altogether different way, she didn't look the Icelander she was. Evidently sensing my confusion, she explained,

"The Icelanders started out looking like Vignis, but the blonde giants feuded and mostly killed each other off. At the same time, they captured slaves from other countries, and the slaves multiplied. I'm descended from the slaves, but Vignis is a throwback to a warrior."

It's hard to reply tactfully to such a comment. Some men might have said, "You don't look like a slave to me!", but I lack that sort of presence. I could have said, "Most of our railwaymen are descended from slaves, and they're very nice people", but that, too, wasn't quite the thing. After some hesitation, I said,

"Then I may not be uncomfortable in Iceland. I thought I'd be the only one who didn't look heroic."

We then talked of Iceland. Vignis had spent little time there, and had limited knowledge of the country. However, her mother seemed always to have been a dispassionate observer of the social scene.

She had observed it, I soon discovered, from a position of some prominence as the only daughter of the publisher of the main newspaper in Reykjavik, the capital and principal city of the country. As members of a colonial elite, her family, like other colonial elites, looked to the mother country for ideas. In fact, it turned out that Denmark was to Vignis' family very much what France was to Sidonie's family. Icelandic gentlemen were educated in Copenhagen rather than Paris, and they read Ibsen rather than Proust. The ideas gathered in Copenhagen were then given local application and formed the basis for the editorials in the Morgenbladid. It all sounded very comfortable. I imagined portly old gentlemen sitting in heavy Victorian drawing rooms and casually laying down the law.

Gudrun's marriage had not had the whole-hearted approval of her family. While her husband had also been educated in Copenhagen, and came from the same general sort of people, something else was involved.

In the days of the sagas, some nine hundred years previously, geneology was considered extremely important. In the sagas themselves it is assumed that, if you know exactly how a man is descended, you will be able to predict how he will act. In the Iceland of those days it was possible to know exactly who everyone was and how he was descended. If there were ever any surprises, the unknown authors of Njalssaga and the Laxdaelasaga didn't admit them. I began on that evening to discover that nothing had really changed.

Vignis' father might have belonged to the right class, but he didn't have the right heredity. There were in his family history wild raffish Vikings who might have been all right on board of an ocean raider, but who were never domesticated. Of course, those elements were only in a minority. Gudrun's husband never became a pirate, even in the way of lawyers. But her parents sensed that he would be uncomfortable to be around. Gudrun now laughed as she said,

"Of course, they turned out to be right. But, anyway, he was interesting."

Another feature of her husband that caused Gudrun's parents to be uneasy was his support for the cause of Icelandic independence. It seemed to the comfortable publisher of the Morgenbladid that there was nothing to be gained economically from independence, and that valuable cultural ties might be lost. He didn't quite understand anyone who disagreed with him on these points.

For Gudrun, these things were in the past. Her parents, over forty when she was born, were no longer alive, and, with their passing, it no longer seemed to matter whether Iceland was independent. Surprisingly, it was Vignis, who had hardly lived in the country, who was for independence. She said,

"It's ridiculous to belong to another country and have all your decisions made thousands of miles away."

Gudrun shrugged, smiled, and said something I didn't catch about Vignis' father. I gathered that she took this little outburst to be an expression of filial piety on Vignis' part. I agreed. Despite the fact that she was fully aware of her father's awfulness, Vignis remembered when she had been his adored little girl. She also revered him intellectually, enough to saddle me with Kierkegaard's decidedly uncomfortable philosophy.

When he was alive, it had always been necessary for Vignis to resist him sufficiently to keep from being utterly dominated. Now that he was dead, it cost her nothing to become an Icelandic patriot.

The next day, Vignis and I went guardedly about town, most of the time with Gudrun. It was a bright pretty day, but still cold, a little below freezing. Everyone's cheeks were red, and there was a cheerfulness in the air which made it difficult to take very seriously any danger to myself.

At one point, the three of us walked right past the courthouse inside of which my activities were being investigated. It was really rather exciting to wonder what the prosecutor and his assistants would think or do if they knew that their quarry was only a hundred yards away. But, then, it had probably never occurred to them that the president of the GER would skip the country with no warning.

Vignis and Gudrun occasionally exchanged looks and smiles, confirming me in my growing suspicion that Vignis told her mother everything whenever opportunity presented itself.

The whole time, I was, of course, on the lookout for Marcia. Surely she would recognize me, even with my hat pulled well down and a scarf around my neck. Vignis and Gudrun must have been alive to the same possibility, and there was thus a certain suspense whenever we rounded a corner or entered a shop. Still, Scranton was a fairly good- sized town and Marcia probably didn't get around much. As it turned out, I never did see her.

On our last evening in town, Gudrun went out, rather implausibly, on an errand. As soon as the door closed behind her, Vignis said to me,

"You want to hear her voice, don't you?"

Without waiting for an answer, she picked up the telephone and told me to get on the extension in the kitchen. I was taken entirely by surprise, but I did as instructed.

When Marcia answered, it was with a voice that I half remembered. There was the old clear cold imperiousness which still excited me, a tone which was fairly high but without the slightest suggestion of a giggle. On the other hand, there was something new. In the one word that Marcia spoke, I could tell that she had learned that she had to be nicer to people. After all, she was in a much poorer position these days. Vignis then launched into a spiel that she must have prepared.

"Is this Mrs. Witt?"

"Yes."

"I'm Mrs. Hammond from the American Red Cross. I was given your name as one who often helps good causes. Have you heard about the outbreak of disease in the Iroquois Indian nation, the worst one in years?"

"Ah no, I don't believe I have."

Marcia, like anyone in such circumstances, knew what was coming. In the old days, she would have given someone who sounded like Vignis a little money. Now, I could tell, she was going to be a martyr and plead poverty. But she would first have to show some interest in the Iroquois, something that wouldn't be easy for her. It was then that Vignis threw in something unexpected.

"It's hardest on the children, of course. The poor little ones born with syphillis are blind and they simply have to grope their way around in the forest."

Marcia reacted immediately with the indignation that was much more a part of her than sympathy.

"Syphillis! How do they get that?"

"Well, a lot of Indian tribes do have it, but it seems to be particularly bad just now because of the businessmen from Scranton and other cities. They go over to the reservation dance hall, and some of the women, you know, are quite sweet and rather simple and ....."

"I should certainly close the dance hall, Mrs. Hammond."

"Well, of course, that's what I wanted to do from the start. I do hope, if you agree with me, that you'll help me influence the people who have the power to make these decisions."

That was a teaser for Marcia, although Vignis couldn't have known it. Marcia would have liked to be part of an avenging crusade, even a little one. But she was also intelligent and incisive. She asked,

"Who wants to keep the dance hall open and why?"

Vignis, by contrast, was sounding wishy-washy and hopeless. She hadn't sounded that way in years, but, hearing her now, I realized what had made me, back at the beginning, underestimate her intelligence. She now replied,

"Well, you know, there are some people, very good people really, who are concerned about health, I guess in sort of a different way. The Iroquois are outdoorsy sorts of people, and they're always out rolling around on the cold ground. They get colds, and even pneumonia. These people, some of them clergymen, say that the Iroquois will spread disease whatever we do, but that it's better if they're warm."

There was a noise from Marcia, but Vignis continued,

"I said, though, that the businessmen wouldn't come over if, you know, it was a matter of being out on the muddy ground. I mean, I can't imagine ...."

"These unspeakable practices must cease forthwith."

That was vintage Marcia. Oddly, she combined intelligence with an unusual degree of gullibility. I could tell from Vignis' voice that she was getting uneasy, and was afraid of starting something. She had probably planned on telling Marcia that the clergymen of Scranton were the best customers at the dance hall, but she merely thanked Marcia and rang off saying that she would send her some literature.

The minute Vignis was off the phone, she came into the kitchen and exclaimed,

"Boy, is she strange!"

I, of course, was amused and pleased.

"I enjoyed your solicitation. I think the Iroquois died out a century ago, but that didn't seem to bother Marcia. You could've enrolled her in a campaign to sing hymns in front of the homes of naughty Scranton businessmen."

"She's so willing to think evil of people. That's what got you into trouble, you know."

"How do you mean?"

"It's like extreme jealousy. When one spouse is totally convinced that the other is having affairs, the other is eventually driven to actually having one in self-defense. If you're going to get blamed for something whether you do it or not, you might as well do it and have the fun. Marcia was probably convinced that you were perverted from the beginning, and I bet she really wanted you to be. After a while, you began doing some of these things just to satisfy her."

To please Vignis, I agreed. But, all the time, I was conscious of what Kierkegaard would have thought. It is, at any rate, nice to have friends who think up excuses for one.

As soon as Gudrun came back, Vignis went out to make a call on an old friend.

Gudrun also had an agenda. She was worried about Vignis, and she wondered what I thought. I, of course, thought that there was nothing whatever wrong with Vignis. She had reservations, and said,

"There are all these difficult strands in her heredity and background."

I almost laughed. Gudrun believed in the Icelandic theory of heredity just as much as her parents had. A consequence was that Vignis' father's screwiness would be bound, sooner or later, to come out in his daughter. I had reached the point where I could tease Gudrun, getting a delightful blush in return. I was about to do so when she announced, almost casually,

"Vignis doesn't know it, but her father killed himself."

That stopped me in my tracks, and I could say only,

"That must have been awful for you, trying to deal with it and keep it quiet at the same time."

"It was, but I had help from the doctor. It was an overdose of aspirin, but he put it down as pneumonia."

"The doctor could have gotten in trouble for that, couldn't he?"

"Yes, indeed. It's a deep dark secret. But I particularly wanted Vignis not to know."

I could hardly imagine why Gudrun had told me such a thing, and said,

"You do know about my reputation, don't you?"

"Yes, but I think you can be trusted, more than anyone, to do what's best for Vignis."

I allowed that I would do my best, and Gudrun then said,

"I'm worried because there are times when she falls silent and turns in, just the way her father used to."

I hadn't noticed anything of the sort, and replied,

"She still seems happy and spontaneous to me."

"She is, most of the time. I was just concerned about those little lapses that she didn't used to have."

I then told Gudrun about the call Vignis had made to Marcia. Gudrun was amused and pleased, and we both decided that there couldn't be very much wrong with anyone capable of such a thing.