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?"