bronzed, powerful face, his eyes shining beneath his heavy brows like
two coals. After a moment he began:

"I don't know how it started. I'd lost a lot of pelts--stolen they were,
down on the Child o' Sin River. Well, she was hasty and nervous, like as
not--she always was brisker and more sudden than I am. I--I laid my
powder-horn and whiskey-flash--up there!"

He pointed to the little shrine of the Virgin, where now his candles
were burning. The priest's grave eyes did not change expression at all,
but looked out wisely, as though he understood everything before it was
told.

Bagot continued: "I didn't notice it, but she had put some flowers
there. She said something with an edge, her face all snapping angry,
threw the things down, and called me a heathen and a wicked heretic--and
I don't say now but she'd a right to do it. But I let out then, for them
stolen pelts was rasping me on the raw. I said something pretty rough,
and made as if I was goin' to break her in two--just fetched up my
hands, and went like this!--"

With a singular simplicity he made a wild gesture with his hands, and an
animal-like snarl came from his throat. Then he looked at the priest
with the honest intensity of a boy.

"Yes, that was what you _did_--what was it you _said_ which was 'pretty
rough'?"

There was a slight hesitation, then came the reply: