"All the same you," replied the girl--"make arrow-heads."
"Oh! he makes arrow-heads, does he? Mine are not arrow-heads, but I
should like to see what your father does. Does he live far from here?"
"Marie take you to-night in canoe."
"Very well, after supper."
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.
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