That was the story that came bit by bit, half in his fever, half in his sanity.  I will tell it in my own words.  He was a Government man, mapping out the last timber lines along the edge of the Great Barren, when he first met Andre Beauvais and his wife, Marie.  An accident took him to their cabin, a sprained leg.  Andre was a fox-hunter, and it was when he was coming home from one of his trips that he found Joseph Brecht helpless in the deep snow, and carried him on his shoulders to his cabin.

Ah, gentlemen, it was the old story—­the story old as time.  In his sanity he told us about Marie, I hovering over him closely, M’sieu sitting back in the shadows.  She was like some wonderful wildflower, French, a little Indian.  He told us how her long black hair would stream in a shining cascade, soft as the breast of a swan, to her knees and below; how it would hang again in two great, lustrous braids, and how her eyes were limpid pools that set his soul afire, and how her slim, beautiful body filled him with a monstrous desire.  She must have been beautiful.  And her husband, Andre Beauvais, worshipped her, and the ground she trod on.  And he had the faith in her that a mother has in her child.  It was a sublime love, and Joseph Brecht told us about it as he lay there, dying, as he supposed.  In that faith of his Andre went unsuspectingly to his trap-lines and his poison-trails, and Marie and Joseph were for many hours at a time alone, sometimes for a day, sometimes for two days, and occasionally for three, for even after his limb had regained its strength Joseph feigned that it was bad.  It was a hard fight, he said—­a hard fight for him to win her; but win her he did, utterly, absolutely, heart, body and soul.  Remember, he was from the South, with all its power of language, all its tricks of love, all its furtiveness of argument, a strong man with a strong mind—­and she had lived all her life in the wilderness.  She was no match for him.  She surrendered.  He told us how, after that, he would unbind her wonderful hair and pillow his face in it; how he lived in a heaven of transport, how utterly she gave herself to him in those times when Andre, was away.

Did he love her?

Yes, in that mad passion of the brute.  But not as you and I might love a woman, gentlemen.  Not as Andre loved her.  Whether she had a heart or a soul it did not matter.  His eyes were blind with an insensate joy when he shrouded himself in her wonderful hair.  To see the wild color painting her face like a flower filled his veins with fire.  The beauty of her, the touch of her, the mad beat of her heart against him made him like a drunken man in his triumph.  Love?  Yes, the love of the brute!  He prolonged his stay.  He had no idea of taking her with him.  When the time came, he would go.  Day after day, week after week he put it off, feigning that the bone of his leg was affected, and Andre Beauvais treated him like a brother.  He told us all this as he lay there in his cabin in that sulphur hell.  I am a man of God, and I do not lie.