She had often taken him out upon the lake before, for she managed their birch-bark canoe with more skill than himself, and it was convenient to have some one to paddle while he fished or read or dreamed.  She rowed him swiftly up the lake for several miles, then, fastening the canoe, led the way through a trail in the forest.  The sun was setting, and “the whispering pines and the hemlocks” of the forest primeval formed a tapestry of gloom around the paternal wigwam as they reached it.  Black Beaver, her father, reclined lazily in the door, watching the coals of the little fire in front of his tent.  He was always lazy.  It 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 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.