none of that religious belief which swallowed up natural awe and turned
it to the refining of life, and to the advantage of a man's soul. Now it
was forced in upon him that his child was wiser than himself, wiser
and safer. His life had been spent in the wastes, with rough deeds
and rugged habits, and a youth of hardship, danger, and almost savage
endurance, had given him a half-barbarian temperament, which could
strike an angry blow at one moment and fondle to death at the next.

When he married sweet Lucette Barbond his religion reached little
farther than a belief in the Scarlet Hunter of the Kimash Hills and
those voices that could be heard calling in the night, till their time
of sleep be past, and they should rise and reconquer the north.

Not even Father Corraine, whose ways were like those of his Master,
could ever bring him to a more definite faith. His wife had at first
striven with him, mourning yet loving. Sometimes the savage in him had
broken out over the little creature, merely because barbaric tyranny
was in him--torture followed by the passionate kiss. But how was she
philosopher enough to understand the cause?

When she fled from their hut one bitter day, as he roared some wild
words at her, it was because her nerves had all been shaken from
threatened death by wild beasts (of which he did not know), and his
violence drove her mad. She had run out of the house, and on, and on,
and on--and she had never come back. That was weeks ago, and there had
been no word nor sign of her since. The man was now busy with it all, in
a slow, cumbrous way. A nature more to be touched by things seen than by
things told, his mind was being awakened in a massive kind of fashion.
He was viewing this crisis of his life as one sees a human face in
the wide searching light of a great fire. He was restless, but he held
himself still by a strong effort, not wishing to disturb the sleeper.
His eyes seemed to retreat farther and farther back under his shaggy
brows.

The great logs in the chimney burned brilliantly, and a brass crucifix
over the child's head now and again reflected soft little flashes of
light. This caught the hunter's eye. Presently there grew up in him a
vague kind of hope that, somehow, this symbol would bring him luck--that
was the way he put it to himself. He had felt this--and something
more--when Dominique prayed. Somehow, Dominique's prayer was the only
one he had ever heard that had gone home to him,