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 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, ran down across the white
of her shoulder, and even past her side and around you, Pierre, till it
seemed like you was lying in a red river. She being about all in, she
got hold of my hand and looked up to me with them blue eyes I been
talking about, and said 'Dad,' and went out. And I damned near
followed her.

"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. I just acted the hound. 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 wolves
in the skins of men. They're the right sons of their mother. When I
go out they'll grab the coin I've saved up, and leave me to lie here
and rot, maybe.

"Lad, it's a fearful thing to die without having no one around that
cares, and to know that even after I've gone out I'm going to lie here
and have my dead eyes looking up at the ceiling. So I'm writing to
you, Pierre, part to tell you what you ought to know; part because I
got a sort of crazy idea that maybe you could get down here to me
before I go out.

"You don't owe me nothing but hard words, Pierre; but if you don't try
to come to me, the ghost of your mother will follow you all your life,
lad, and you'll be seeing her blue eyes and the red-gold of her hair in
the dark of the night as I see it now. Me, I'm a hard