“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 like this!—” With a singular simplicity he made a wild gesture with his hands, and an animal-like snarl came from his throat. Then he looked at the priest with the honest intensity of a boy.
“Yes, that is what you did—what was it you said which was ‘pretty rough’?”
There was a slight hesitation, then came the reply: “I said there was enough powder spilt on the floor to kill all the priests in heaven.”
A fire suddenly shot up into Father Corraine’s face, and his lips tightened for an instant, but presently he was as before, and he said:
“How that will face you one day, Bagot! Go on. What else?”
Sweat began to break out on Bagot’s face, and he spoke as though he were carrying a heavy weight on his shoulders, low and brokenly.
“Then I said, ‘And if virgins has it so fine, why didn’t you stay one?’”
“Blasphemer!” said the priest in a stern, reproachful voice, his face turning a little pale, and he brought the crucifix to his lips. “To the mother of your child—shame! What more?”