racks; and he said, in his quiet, soft voice:

"Do you know of a man named Jacques Dupont, m'sieu?"

Joe Delesse tried to peer through the cloud of smoke at Reese Beaudin's
face.

"Yes, I know him. Does he happen to be a friend of yours?"

Reese laughed softly.

"I have heard of him. They say that he is a devil. To the west I was
told that he can whip any man between Hudson's Bay and the Great Bear,
that he is a beast in man-shape, and that he will surely be at the big
sale at Lac Bain."

On his knees the huge hands of Joe Delesse clenched slowly, gripping in
their imaginary clutch a hated thing.

"Oui, I know him," he said. "I know also--Elise--his wife. See!"

He thrust suddenly his two huge knotted hands through the smoke that
drifted between him and the stranger who had sought the shelter of his
cabin that night.

"See--I am a man full-grown, m'sieu--a man--and yet I am afraid of him!
That is how much of a devil and a beast in man-shape he is."

Again Reese Beaudin laughed in his low, soft voice.

"And his wife, mon ami? Is she afraid of him?"

He had stopped smoking. Joe Delesse saw his face. The stranger's eyes
made him look twice and think twice.

"You have known her--sometime?"

"Yes, a long time ago. We were children together. And I have heard all
has not gone well with her. Is it so?"

"Does it go well when a dove is mated to a vulture, m'sieu?"

"I have also heard that she grew up to be very beautiful," said Reese
Beaudin, "and that Jacques Dupont killed a man for her. If that is so--"

"It is not so," interrupted Delesse. "He drove another man away--no,
not a man, but a yellow-livered coward who had no more fight in him
than a porcupine without quills! And yet she says he was not a coward.
She has always said, even to Dupont, that it was the way le Bon Dieu
made him, and that because he was made that way he was greater than all
other men in the North Country. How do I know? Because, m'sieu, I am
Elise Dupont's cousin."

Delesse wondered why Reese Beaudin's eyes were glowing like living
coals.

"And yet--again, it is only rumor I have heard--they say this man,
whoever he was, did actually run away, like a dog that had been whipped
and was afraid to return to its kennel."

"Pst!" Joe Delesse flung his great arms wide. "Like that--he was gone.
And no one ever saw him again, or heard of him again. But I know that
she knew--my cousin, Elise. What word it was he left for her at the
last s