The narrator details how, when he was three, his widowed mother fell in love with the companion - then an eighteen-year-old roustabout - who was charming at first but was later revealed as a gambler and womanizer.
The narrator then tells the man who ruined his mother's life that it must have been by "providence" that only they survived, and cautions the roustabout to listen closely, as what he will be told next "will be the last words (he) will hear".