“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. “I wanted to see Auda Brent before I went away for the winter. Lovely woman! Brent is a lucky fellow–”
“Brent is my friend,” answered Liot, angrily. But Bele did not notice the tone, and he continued:
“I would rather have Auda for a friend.” And then, in his usual insinuating, boastful way, he praised the woman’s beauty and graciousness in words which had an indefinable offense, and yet one quite capable of that laughing denial which commonly shielded Bele’s impertinence. “Brent gave me a piece of Saxony cloth and a gold brooch for her–Brent is in Amsterdam. I have taken the cloth four times; there were also other gifts–but I will say nothing of them.”
“You are inventing lies, Bele Trenby. Touch your tongue, and your fingers will come out of your lips black as the pit. Say to Brent what you have said to me. You dare not, you infernal coward!”
“You have a pretty list of bad words, Liot, and I won’t try to change mine with them.”
Liot did not answer. He turned and looked at the man behind him, and the devil entered into his heart and whispered, “There is the venn before you.” The words were audible to him; they set his heart on fire and made his blood rush into his face, and beat on his ear-drums like thunder. He could scarcely stand. 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[[2]] had come unfastened, and he dropped the stick he carried in order to retie them. At this point there was a slight elevation on the morass, and Bele looked at Liot as he put his foot upon it, asking sharply:
“Is this the crossing?”
Liot fumbled at his shoe-strings and said not a word; for he knew it was not the crossing.
“Is this the crossing, Liot?” Bele again asked. And again Liot answered neither yes nor no. Then Bele flew into a passion and cried out with an oath: