l and wormwood to Bele's
touchy self-conceit. It was a great spiritual weakness, and one
which Liot was not likely to combat; for prayer was so vital a thing
to him that it became imbued with all his personal characteristics.
He made petition that God would keep him from hurting Bele Trenby,
and yet in his heart he was afraid that God would hear and grant his
prayer. The pagan in Liot was not dead; and the same fight between
the old man and the new man that made Paul's life a constant warfare
found a fresh battle-ground in Liot's soul.

He began his devotions in the spirit of Christ, but they ended
always in a passionate arraignment of Bele Trenby through the psalms
of David. These wondrously human measures got Liot's heart in their
grip; he wept them and prayed them and lived them until their words
blended with all his thoughts and speech; through them he grew
"familiar" with God, as Job and David and Jonah were familiar--a
reverent familiarity. Liot ventured to tell Him all that he had to
suffer from Bele--the lies that he could not refute, the insolences
he could not return, his restricted intercourse with Karen, and the
loss of that frank fellowship with such of his townsmen as had
business reasons for not quarreling with Bele.

So matters went on, and the feeling grew no better, but worse,
between the men. When the devil could not find a man to irritate
Bele and Liot, then he found Matilda Sabiston always ready to speak
for him. She twitted Bele with his prudences, and if she met Liot on
the street she complimented him on his patience, and prophesied
for Karen a "lowly mannered husband, whom she could put under her
feet."

One day in October affairs all round were at their utmost strain.
The summer was over, and Bele was not likely to make the Shetland
coast often till after March. His talk was of the French and Dutch
ports and their many attractions. And Matilda was cross at the
prospect of losing her favorite's society, and unjustly inclined to
blame Bele for his want of success with her niece.

"Talk if you want to, Bele," she said snappishly, "of the pretty
women in France and Holland. You are, after all, a great dreamer, and
you don't dream true; the fisherman Liot can win where you lose."

Then Bele said some words about Liot, and Matilda laughed. Bele
thought the laugh full of scorn; so he got up and left the house
in a passion, and Matilda immediately turned on Karen.

"Ill luck came with you, girl,