white, shading down through exquisite gradations into deep green, and representing Aphrodite rising from the sea; the white foam rose gracefully, with arms extended, scattering the drops of spray from her hands and her wind-blown hair; the foamy waves were beautifully cut with their intense hollows and snowy crests; it was evidently the work of a cultivated as well as a natural artist; it was not surprising that Mrs. Dalliba should insist that it could not have been executed out of Italy.

But Prof.  Stonehenge was right too; it was a stone of the chalcedonic family, resembling sardonyx, except in color; others, similar to it both in a natural state and wrought into arrow-heads, had been found along the shores of Lake Superior.  This seemed to have been brought away from its associates by some wandering tribe, for it had been discovered in Central Illinois.  The nearest point at which other relics belonging to the same period had been found was the site of Fort Crevecoeur, near Starved Rock, Illinois.  After all, the stone only differed from the arrow-heads of Lake Superior in its beautiful carving and unprecedented size—­and, ah, yes! there was another difference, the mystery of its discovery.  No other skeleton among all the buried braves unearthed by scientific research at Crevecoeur had been found with a gem for a heart—­a gem that glittered not on the breast, but within a chest hooped with human bone.  Mrs. Dalliba had just remarked that she had never felt so strong a desire to possess and wear any jewel as now; but when Prof.  Stonehenge told how the uncanny thing rattled within the white ribs of the skeleton in which it was found, she allowed the gem to slip from her hand, while something of its own pale green flickered in the disgusted expression which quivered about the corners of her mobile mouth.  The cameo was a mystery which had baffled geologist, antiquarian, and sculptor alike, for Father Francis Xavier had gone down to his grave with his secret and his cameo hidden in his heart.  He had kept both well for two centuries, and when the heart crumbled in dust it took its secret with it, leaving only the cameo to bewilder conjecture.

Its story was, after all, a simple one.  On the southern shore of Michillimackinac, in the romantic days of the first exploration of the great lakes by the Courreurs de Bois and pioneer priests, had settled good Pere Ignace, a devoted Jesuit missionary.  The old man was revered and loved by the Indians among whom he dwelt.  His labors blossomed in a little village, called from his patron saint the mission of St. Ignace, that displayed its cluster of white huts and wigwams like the petals of a water-lily on the margin of the lake.  Just back of the village was a round knoll which served as a landmark on the lake, for the shore near St. Ignace was remarkably level.  On the summit of this mound the good father had reared a great white cross, and at its foot the superstitious Indians often laid votive offerings of strongly incongruous