“Hast thou not heard,” insisted Father de Casson with that severe credulity which afflicted the best men of the time, “about Jean Saint-Père--slain by the Iroquois and beheaded, and his head carried off--speaking to them in warnings and upbraidings? Yea, the scalped skull ceased not threatening them with the vengeance of Heaven, in plain, well-spoken Iroquois.” Annahotaha sounded some guttural which the priest could not receive as assent. “Blessed is a country, my son, when such notable miracles are done in it. For, see you, there was Father le Maître, who had his head likewise cut off by these children of evil, but without making the stain of blood on his handkerchief which received it. And there were his features stamped on the cloth so that any one might behold them. This miracle of Father le Maître hath scarcely ceased to ring in Montreal, for it is a late thing. I counsel the chief of the Hurons to give his child to the Church. The saints will then be around her in life, and in death they will gather her to themselves.” Annahotaha sat as if turning over in his mind this proposal, which he had secretly foreseen and wished. “The father has spoken,” he finally pronounced; and silence closed this conference, as silence had preceded it. Afterwards Dollier de Casson set up his chapel beside a sheltering rock and prepared to shrive the Huron camp, beginning with Massawippa. Her he confessed apart, in the inclosure of the lodge, probing as many of her nature’s youthful and tortuous avenues as the wisdom of man could penetrate. She raised no objection to that plan of life her father and her confessor both proposed for her; but the priest could not afterwards distinctly recall that she accepted it. When Father de Casson called the congregation of Indians to approach his temporary chapel, one of the restless braves who had sauntered from sputtering fire to dripping tree skulked crouching in the shadow of Massawippa’s tent. He had a reason for avoiding the priest as well as one for seeking her. When the others were taken up with their devotions he crept to the tent-flap, and firelight shone broadly on his dark side-countenance, separating him in race from the Hurons. He was a Frenchman. But his stiff black hair was close shorn except one bristling tuft, his oily skin had been touched with paint, and he wore the full war-dress of his foster tribe. “Massawippa,” whispered this proselyte, raising the lodge-flap, “I have something here for you.” The girl was telling her beads with a soft mutter in the little penances her priest had imposed upon her. He could see but her blurred figure in her dim shrine. “Massawippa! La Mouche brings you a baked fish,” he whispered in the provincial French. Her undisturbed voice continued its muttered orisons. “Massawippa!” repeated the youth, speaking this time in Huron, his tone entreating piteously. “La Mouche brings you a baked fish. It comes but now from the fire.”