“I never touched the man,” he urged. “I said nothing to lead him wrong. He was full of evil; his last words were such as slay a woman’s honor. I did right not to answer him. A hundred times I have vowed I would not turn a finger to save his life, and God heard and knew my vow. He delivered him into my hand; he let me see the end of the wicked. I am not to blame! I am not to blame!” Then said an interior voice, that he had not silenced, “Go and tell the sheriff what has happened.”

Liot turned home at this advice. Why should he speak now? Bele was dead and buried; let his memory perish with him. He summoned from every nook of his being all the strength of the past, the present, and the future, and with a resolute hand lifted the latch of the door. Karen threw down her knitting and ran to meet him; and when he had kissed her once he felt that the worst was over. Paul asked him about the house, and talked over his plans and probabilities, and after an interval he said:

“I saw Bele Trenby’s ship was ready for sea at the noon hour; she will be miles away by this time. It is a good thing, for Mistress Sabiston may now come to reason.”

“It will make no odds to us; we shall not be the better for Bele’s absence.”

“I think differently. He is one of the worst of men, and he makes everything grow in Matilda’s eyes as he wishes to. Lerwick can well spare him; a bad man, as every one knows.”

“A man that joys the devil. Let us not speak of him.”

“But he speaks of you.”

“His words will not slay me. Kinsman, let us go to sleep now; I am promised to the fishing with the early tide.”

But Liot could not sleep. In vain he closed his eyes; they saw more than he could tell. There were invisible feet in his room; the air was heavy with presence, and full of vague, miserable visions; for “Wickedness, condemned by her own witness, is very timorous, and, being pressed with Conscience, always forecasteth grievous things.”

When Bele stepped into his grave there had been a bright moonlight blending with the green, opalish light of the aurora charging to the zenith; and in this mysterious mingled glow Liot had seen for a moment the white, upturned face that the next moment went down with open eyes into the bottomless water. Now, though the night had become dark and stormy, he could not dismiss the sight, and anon the Awful One who dwelleth in the thick darkness drew near, and for the first time in his life Liot Borson was afraid. Then it was that his deep and real religious life came to his help. He rose, and stood with clasped hands in the middle of the room, and began to plead his cause, even as Job did in the night of his terror. In his strong, simple speech he told everything to God–told him the wrongs that had been done him, the provocations he had endured. His solemnly low implorations were drenched with agonizing tears, and they only ceased when the dayspring came and drove the somber terrors of the night before it.

Then he took his boat and went off to sea, though the waves were black and the wind whistling loud and shrill. He wanted the loneliness that only the sea could give him. He felt that he must “cry aloud” for deliverance from the great strait into which he had fallen. No man could help him, no human sympathy come between him and his God. Into such communions not even the angels enter.

At sundown he came home, his boat loaded with fish, and his soul quiet as the sea was quiet after the storm had spent itself. Karen said he “looked as if he had seen Death”; and Paul answered: “No wonder at that; a man in an open boat in such weather came near to him.” Others spoke of his pallor and his weariness; but no one saw on his face that mystical self-signature of submission which comes only through the pang of soul-travail.

He had scarcely changed his clothing and sat down to his tea before Paul said: “A strange thing has happened. Trenby’s ship is still in harbor. He cannot be found; no one has seen him since he left the ship yesterday. He bade Matilda Sabiston good-by in the morning, and in the afternoon he told his men to be ready to lift anchor when the tide turned. The tide turned, but he came not; and they wondered at it, but were not anxious; now, however, there is a great fear about him.”

“What fear is there?” asked Liot.

“Men know not; but it is uppermost in all minds that in some way his life-days are ended.”

“Well, then, long or short, it is God who numbers our days.”

“What do you think of the matter?” asked Paul.

“As you know, kinsman,” answered Liot, “I have ever hated Bele, and that with reason. Often I have said it were well if he were hurt, and better if he were dead; but at this time I will say no word, good or bad. If the man lives, I have nothing good to say of him; if he is dead, I have nothing bad to say.”

“That is wise. Our fathers believed in and feared the fetches of dead men; they thought them to be not far away from the living, and able to be either good friends or bitter enemies to them.”

“I have heard that often. No saying is older than ‘Bare is a man’s back without the kin behind him.’”

“Then you are well clad, Liot, for behind you are generations of brave and good men.”

“The Lord is at my right hand; I shall not be moved,” said Liot, solemnly. “He is sufficient. I am as one of the covenanted, for the promise is ‘to you and your children.’”

Paul nodded gravely. He was a Calvinistic pagan, learned in the Scriptures, inflexible in faith, yet by no means forgetful of the potent influences of his heroic dead. Truly he trusted in the Lord, but he was never unwilling to remember that Bor and Bor’s mighty sons stood at his back. Even though they were in the “valley of shadows,” they were near enough in a strait to divine his trouble and be ready to help him.

The tenor of this conversation suited both men. They pursued it in a fitful manner and with long, thoughtful pauses until the night was far spent; then they said, “Good sleep,” with a look into each other’s eyes which held not only promise of present good-will, but a positive “looking forward” neither cared to speak more definitely of.

The next day there was an organized search for Bele Trenby through the island hamlets and along the coast; but the man was not found far or near; he had disappeared as absolutely as a stone dropped into mid-ocean. Not until the fourth day was there any probable clue found; then a fishing-smack came in, bringing a little rowboat usually tied to Howard Hallgrim’s rock. Hallgrim was a very old man and had not been out of his house for a week, so that it was only when the boat was found at sea that it was missed from its place. It was then plain to every one that Bele had taken the boat for some visit and met with an accident.

So far the inference was correct. Bele’s own boat being shipped ready for the voyage, he took Hallgrim’s boat when he went to see Auda Brent; but he either tied it carelessly or he did not know the power of the tide at that point, for when he wished to return the boat was not there. For a few minutes he hesitated; he was well aware that the foot-path across the moor was a dangerous one, but he was anxious to leave Lerwick with that tide, and he risked it.

These facts flashed across Liot’s mind with the force of truth, and he never doubted them. All, then, hung upon Auda Brent’s reticence; if she admitted that Bele had called on her that afternoon, some one would divine the loss of the boat and the subsequent tragedy. For several wretched days he waited to hear the words that would point suspicion to him. They were not spoken. Auda