"Then what brought you here? I have hoped you were dead for many a year. If all the Borsons, root and branch, were gone to their father the devil, it would be a pleasure to me. I have ever hated them; to all who knew them they were bringers of bad luck," she muttered angrily, looking into David's face with eyes full of baleful fire. "Yet is love stronger than hate, and because my mother was of your blood and kin I will not hate you." "Hear a wonder!" she screamed. "The man will not hate me. Son of a murderer, I want not one kind thought from you." "There is no cause to call my father what neither God nor man has called him." "Cause enough! I know that right well." "Then it is only right you give proof of such assertions. Say what you mean and be done with it." "Ah! you are getting angry at last. Your father would have been spitting fire before this. But it was not with fire he slew Bele Trenby--no, indeed; it was with water. Did he not tell you so when he stood on the brink of Tophet?" "God did not suffer his soul to be led near the awful place. When he gave up his ghost he gave it up to the merciful Father of spirits. It is wicked to speak lies of the living; it is abominable and dangerous to speak ill of the dead." "I fear neither the living nor the dead. I will say to my last breath that Liot Borson murdered Bele Trenby. He was long minded to do the deed; at last he did it." "How can you alone, of all the men and women in Lerwick, know this?" "That night I dreamed a dream. I saw the moss and the black water, and Bele's white, handsome face go down into it. And I saw your father there. What for? That he might do the murder in his heart." "The dream came from your own thoughts." "It came from Bele's angel. The next day--yes, and many times afterward--I took to the spot the dog that loved Bele, and the creature whined and crouched to his specter. Men are poor, sightless creatures; animals see spirits where we are blind as bats." "Are these your proofs? Why do people suffer you to say such things?" "Because in their hearts they believe me. Murders tell tales; secretly, in the night, crossing the moss, when men are not thinking, they breathe suspicion; they speak after being long dumb. Fifty years is not the date of their bond. They haunt the place of their tragedy, and men dream of the deed. So it is. The report sticks to Liot, and more will come of it yet. Oh, that he were in your shoes to-day! I would find the strength to slay him, if I died and went to hell for it." "Woman, why dost thou damn thyself while yet there is a hope of mercy?" "Mercy! What have you to do with mercy? One thing rejoices me: it will not be long ere I meet that blessed thrall that cursed all the generations of the Borsons. He and I will strike hands in that quarrel; and it shall go ill with you and your children till the last Borson be cursed off the face of the earth."