"So I got a idea that I had to write to you, Pierre. There ain't
nothing I can make up to you, but knowing the truth may help some.
Poor kid, you ain't got no father in the eyes of the law, and neither
did you have no mother, and there ain't no name that belongs to you
by rights.

"I was a man in them days, and your mother was a woman that brought
your heart into your throat and set it singing. She and me, we were
too busy being just plain happy to care much about what was right or
wrong; so you just sort of happened along, Pierre. Me being so close
to hell, I remember her eyes that was bluer than heaven looking up
to me, and her hair, that was copper with gold lights in it.

"I buried Irene on the side of the mountain under a big, rough rock,
and I didn't carve nothing on the rock. Then I took you, Pierre, and I
knew I wasn't no sort of a man to raise up the son of Irene; so I
brought you to Father Victor on a winter night and left you in his
arms. That was after I'd done my best to raise you and you was just
about old enough to chatter a bit. There wasn't nothing else to do. My
wife, she went pretty near crazy when I brought you home. And she'd of
killed you, Pierre, if I hadn't took you away.

"You see, I was married before I met Irene. So there ain't no alibi
for me. But me being so close to hell now, I look back to that time,
and somehow I see no wrong in it still.

"And if I done wrong then, I've got my share of hell-fire for it. Here
I lie, with my boys, Bill and Bert, sitting around in the corner of
the room waiting for me to go out. They ain't men, Pierre. They're