unicated
itself; he was chilled by her simple presence.
"What is your business?" she asked.
"I am the son of your niece Karen."
"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. He was a murderer while he lived, and now I hope
that he is a soul in pain forevermore."
"I am his son, and you must not--"
"Then what brought you here? I have hoped you were dead for many a
year. If all the Borsons, root and branch, were gone to their father
the devil, it would be a pleasure to me. I have ever hated them;
to all who knew them they were bringers of bad luck," she muttered
angrily, looking into David's face with eyes full of baleful fire.
"Yet is love stronger than hate, and because my mother was of your
blood and kin I will not hate you."
"Hear a wonder!" she screamed. "The man will not hate me. Son of a
murderer, I want not one kind thought from you."
"There is no cause to call my father what neither God nor man has
called him."
"Cause enough! I know that right well."
"Then it is only right you give proof of such assertions. Say what
you mean and be done with it."
"Ah! you are getting angry at last. Your father would have been
spitting fire before this. But it was not with fire he slew Bele
Trenby--no, indeed; it was with water. Did he not tell you so when
he stood on the brink of Tophet?"
"God did not suffer his soul to be led near the awful place. When he
gave up his ghost he gave it up to the merciful Father of spirits.
It is wicked to speak lies of the living; it is abominable and
dangerous to speak ill of the dead."
"I fear neither the living nor the dead. 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."
"The dream came from your own thoughts."
"It came from Bele's angel. The next day--yes, and many times
afterward--I took to the spot the dog that loved B
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