t was
difficult to believe that he ever climbed or dug or dived for agates as
Marie had said, so complete a picture he seemed of inaction. The girl
spoke a few words to him in their native dialect, and he grumblingly
rose, shuffled into the interior of the wigwam, and brought out two
baskets. One was a shallow tray filled with the finished heads in great
variety of material and color. There were white carnelian, delicately
striped with prophetic red, blood-stone deep colored and hard as ruby,
agates of every shade and marking, flinty jasper, emerald-banded
malachite, delicate rose color, and purple one made from shells, and
various crystals with whose names Father Francis 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 arrow-head--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 arrow-head 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 no