their hiding-places of the day.  One after another, as the darkness thickened, the different tribes of the people of the night answered the summons of the first stars.  A mile down the river a loon gave its harsh love-cry; far out of the west came the faint trail-song of a wolf; in the river the night-feeding trout splashed like the tails of beaver; over the roof of the wilderness came the coughing, moaning challenge of a bull moose that yearned for battle.  And over these same forest tops rose the moon, the stars grew thicker and brighter, and through the finger of hardwood glowed the fire of St. Pierre Boulain’s men—­while close beside him, silent in these hours of silence, David felt growing nearer and still nearer to him the presence of St. Pierre’s wife.

On the strip of sand Andre, the Broken Man, rose and stood like the stub of a misshapen tree.  And then slowly he moved on and was swallowed up in the mellow glow of the night.

“It is at night that he seeks,” said St. Pierre’s wife, for it was as if David had spoken the thought that was in his mind.

David, for a moment, was silent.  And then he said, “You asked me to tell you about Black Roger Audemard.  I will, if you care to have me.  Do you?”

He saw the nodding of her head, though the moon and star-mist veiled her face.

“Yes.  What do the Police say about Roger Audemard?”

He told her.  And not once in the telling of the story did she speak or move.  It was a terrible story at best, he thought, but he did not weaken it by smoothing over the details.  This was his opportunity.  He wanted her to know why he must possess the body of Roger Audemard, if not alive, then dead, and he wanted her to understand how important it was that he learn more about Andre, the Broken Man.

“He was a fiend, this Roger Audemard,” he began.  “A devil in man shape, afterward called ‘Black Roger’ because of the color of his soul.”

Then he went on.  He described Hatchet River Post, where the tragedy had happened; then told of the fight that came about one day between Roger Audemard and the factor of the post and his two sons.  It was an unfair fight; he conceded that—­three to one was cowardly in a fight.  But it could not excuse what happened afterward.  Audemard was beaten.  He crept off into the forest, almost dead.  Then he came back one stormy night in the winter with three strange friends.  Who the friends were the Police never learned.  There was a fight, but all through the fight Black Roger Audemard cried out not to kill the factor and his sons.  In spite of that one of the sons was killed.  Then the terrible thing happened.  The father and his remaining son were bound hand and foot and fastened in the ancient dungeon room under the Post building.  Then Black Roger set the building on fire, and stood outside in the storm and laughed like a madman at the dying shrieks of his victims.  It was the season when the trappers were on their lines, and there were but few people at the post.  The company clerk and one other attempted to interfere, and Black Roger killed them with his own hands.  Five deaths that night—­two of them horrible beyond description!