"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: "You are a cursed fellow, Liot Borson, and in the devil's own temper; I will stay no longer with you." He stepped forward as he spoke, and instantly a cry, shrill with mortal terror, rang across the moor from sea to sea. Liot quickly raised himself, but he had barely time to distinguish the white horror of his enemy's face and the despair of his upthrown arms. The next moment the moss had swallowed the man, and the thick, peaty water hardly stirred over his engulfing. For a little while Liot fixed his eyes on the spot; then he lifted his stick and went forward, telling his soul in triumphant undertones: "He has gone down quick into hell; the Lord has brought him down into the pit of destruction; the bloody and deceitful man shall not live out half his days; he has gone to his own place."