t 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 Woman still exists. Strange to say, under its
sharp-cut features a steamer has since been wrecked and sunk, and its
expression of gloomy fate is now awfully appropriate. Marie had visited
"the great Sea Water" with her father. Nature's titanic and fanciful
frescoing and cameo-cutting had strongly wrought upon her impressionable
mind, and the old legends and superstitions of paganism had been by no
means effaced by the very slight veneer of Christianity which she had
received at the mission.

From this evening Father Xavier's manner toward her changed. Her smile
no longer seemed to irritate him, and a close observer might have
noticed that she smiled less than formerly. He talked with her more,
paid closer attention to her studies, made her little presents from time
to time, and spoke to her always with studied gentleness that was quite
foreign to his nature. And Marie watched him at work over his stones,
spent her spare time in rambling in search of those which she had
learned he liked, and laid upon his table without remark each new
discovery of quartz, or crystal, or pebble. She had been in the habit of
making little boxes which she decorated with a rude mosaic of small
shells, and Father Xavier noticed that these gradually acquired more
taste and were arranged with some eye to the harmonies of color, while
the forms were copied with Chinese accuracy from patterns on the
bindings of his books or the borders of the religious pictures. Marie
was developing under an art education which, if carried far enough,
might effect great things. She even managed his graving tools with a
good deal of accuracy, copying designs which he set her, until he
wondered what his father would have thought of so apt an apprentice.

Suddenly, one morning in midsummer, Marie announced that she should
leave them. Her father was going on a long expedition for stones to the
head of Lake Superior, and she did not know when she might return.