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.  As she imparted this information she watched Father Xavier from the corner of her eye, and something of the old childish smile reappeared as he showed that he was really annoyed.

The summer passed profitably for the Black Beaver, and he began to think of returning to St. Ignace with his small store of valuable stones before the fall gales should set in.  He was just a few days too late.  When within sight of Michillimackinac a storm arose driving them out upon the open lake, and playing with their canoe as though it were a cockle-shell.  When the storm abated a cloudy night had set in; no land was visible in any direction; they had completely