But the season of good fortune which followed the martyrdom of Goupil and Jogues was destined to be but short. The increasing hostility of the Iroquois was to be the destruction at once of the Huron nation and of the high hopes which had been built upon that people. Yet it may be questioned whether the Jesuits would have long been left at peace even had these terrible foes kept within the range of their own villages. Even among the Hurons the murmurs of suspicion and dislike had begun to be heard again. The French ceremony of "prayer," said the savages, had blighted the crops, and the mystic rites of the priests had brought famine and desolation upon the nation. There was even a story, widely believed in the Huron lodges, that an Indian girl, baptized before her death, had been to the French heaven, and, after suffering horrible torments there from the pale faces, had made her escape back to earth to deter her countrymen from rushing to the same fate. A young Frenchman in the service of the mission had been treacherously murdered; and though the missionaries by a wise show of resolution had compelled the nation to make satisfaction for the outrage by the ceremonious offering of numerous strings of wampum, and had thus restored their waning influence, it was clear that their position at the best was extremely precarious, and that persecution, if it came not from abroad, would pretty surely be commenced at home. The catastrophe, therefore, when it came, found the priests not unprepared. For years they had carried their lives in their hands, ready to cast them down at any moment. For years they had walked through the valley of the shadow of death, and in the midst of the dark river and in the bitter waters they knew that the almighty Arm was stretched forth to hold them up.