The hunter's hands clenched, and a wicked light flashed up into his eyes;
but the calm, benignant gaze of the other cooled the tempest in his
veins. The priest sat down on the couch where the child lay, and took the
fevered hand in his very softly.

"Stay where you are, Bagot," he said; "just there where you are, and tell
me what your trouble is, and why your wife is not here. . . . Say all
honestly--by the name of the Christ!" he added, lifting up a large iron
crucifix that hung on his breast.

Bagot sat down on a bench near the fireplace, the light playing on his
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 whisky-flask-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 were 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