"Where is the boat?—that is worth more than your body. And soul you have none."
She raised her head and looked upward.
"I have lost the boat."
She thought that, very likely, he would kill her for it. Once when she had lost an osier basket, not a hundredth part the cost of this vessel, he had beaten her till every bone in her frame had seemed broken for many a week. But she looked up quietly there among the dripping bushes and the cheerless grassy ways.
That she never told a lie he above in the loft knew by long proof; but this was in his sight only on a piece with the strength born in her from the devil; the devil had in all ages told so many truths to the confusion of the saints God.
"Drifted where?"
"I do not know—on the face of the flood,—with the tide."
"You had left it loose."
"I got out to push it off the sand. It had grounded. I forgot it. It went adrift."
"What foul thing were you at meanwhile?"