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It is an hour since I passed Skegg's Point a full hour, for it has been a step at a time. Now you will let me step after you; I see you know the way." He spoke with a nervous rapidity, and Liot only answered: "Step as you wish to." Bele fell a couple of feet behind, but continued to talk. "I have been round Skegg's Point," he said with a chuckling laugh.

"Yet it is a thing to be wondered at," she said finally, "that you, David, know not these old histories better than I do; for I have often heard that no one in all the islands could tell a story so well as Liot Borson.

A fierce joy ran through his veins, and the fiery radiations of his life colored the air around him; he saw everything red. The venn, a narrow morass with only one safe crossing, was before them; in a few moments they were on its margin. Liot suddenly stopped; the leather strings of his rivlins had come unfastened, and he dropped the stick he carried in order to retie them.

He had scarcely left the sea-shore when he saw a man before him, walking very slowly and irresolutely; and Liot said to himself, "He steps like one who is not sure of his way." With the thought he called out, "Take care!" and hastened forward; and the man stood still and waited for him.

And at these questions Liot's countenance would glow as he answered gladly, "So far He has helped me." From this catechism, and the clasp and look that gave it living sympathy, Liot always turned homeward full of such strength that he longed to meet his enemy on the road, just that he might show him that "noble not caring," which was gall and wormwood to Bele's touchy self-conceit.

I will say to my last breath that Liot Borson murdered Bele Trenby. He was long minded to do the deed; at last he did it." "How can you alone, of all the men and women in Lerwick, know this?" "That night I dreamed a dream. I saw the moss and the black water, and Bele's white, handsome face go down into it. And I saw your father there. What for? That he might do the murder in his heart."

He had been led to think that his cousin Paul had a large house and the touch of money-getting. "He and his will be well off," Liot had affirmed more than once. And one day, while he yet could stand in the door of his hut, he had looked longingly northward and said, "Oh, if I could win home again! Paul would make a fourteen days' feast to welcome me."

And as he did so she talked to him of his father Liot, whom she had known in her girlhood; and David told her of Liot's long, hard fight with death, and she said with a kind of sad pride: "Yes; that way Liot was sure to fare to his long home. He would set his teeth and fight for his life. Was it always well between him and you?"

Over and over I have seen Liot Borson bring from the sea men who hated him, and whom no one else would venture life for. Never mortal man walked closer with God than Liot Borson. I, who have lived alone with him for twenty years, I know this; and I will dare to say that in the matter of Bele Trenby he did no worse, and perhaps a great deal better, than any other man would have done.

"I have no niece." "Yea, but you have. Death breaks no kinship. It is souls that are related, not bodies; and souls live forever." "Babble! In a word, what brought you here?" "I came only to see you." "Well, then, I sent not for you." "Yet I thought you would wish to see me." "I do not." "Liot Borson is dead." "I am glad of it.