d marking, flinty jasper, emerald-banded
malachite, delicate rose color, and purple ones made from shells, and
various crystals with whose names Father Francois Xavier was
unfamiliar. There was one shading from dark green through to red, only
a drop of the latter color on the very tip of the arrow where blood
would first kiss blood. Father Xavier looked at it in wondering
admiration, and at last asked Black Beaver what he called it.

"It is a devil-stone," replied the Indian. "More here," and he opened
the deeper basket in which were stored the unground and uncut stones,
and placed a superb gem in Father Xavier's hand. He had ground it
sufficiently to show that it was in two layers, white and green; in this
there was no touch of red, but in every other respect it was the
handsomer stone.

"Will you sell it to me?" asked the priest. "How much?"

The Indian smiled with an expression strangely like that of his
daughter, and put it back with alacrity in his basket, saying, "Me no
sell big devil-stone. No money buy."

"What do you mean to do with it?" asked Father Xavier.

"Make arrowhead--very hungry--no blood"; and he indicated the absence of
the red tint. "Very hungry--kill very much--never have enough!"

"Then you mean to keep it and use it yourself?"

"No," said the other. "Me no hunt game--hunt stones."

"What will you do with it?" asked the puzzled priest.

"Give it away," said Black Beaver--"give away to greatest----"

"Chief?" asked Father Xavier.

Black Beaver shook his head.

"Friend then?"

"No," grunted the arrowhead maker--"give away to big _enemy_!"

"What did he mean by that?" Father Xavier asked of Marie on their way
back to the mission. And the girl explained the superstition that
Indians of their own tribe never killed an enemy with ordinary weapons,
for fear that his soul would wait for theirs in the Happy Hunting
Grounds; but if he was shot with a devil-stone, the soul could not fly
upward, but would sink through all eternity, until it reached the
deepest spot of all the great lakes under the stony gaze of the Doom
Woman.

When he inquired further as to the whereabouts of the Doom Woman's
residence he ascertained that she was only a sharp cliff among "the
pictured rocks of sandstone" of the upper lake--a cliff that viewed from
either side maintained its resemblance to a female profile looking
sternly down at the water beneath it, which was here believed to be
unfathomable. The Doom Wom