"
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.
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