upon her face; and reddening in the folds of his double chin he
slipped some gold pieces into the muddy hand of the priest.

"Be good enough, sir, to give the damsel these," he said, stiffly. "Tell
her I will have the search continued. If the stone is found she shall
have it. If any one steals it I will hang him."

As the priest, leaning over the boat-side, slipped the pieces into the
buckskin bag, Colonel Winslow turned away, and rather roughly ordered
the bespattered soldiers back to camp to clean themselves.

After the priest had bid farewell to the still weeping Marie and the
little company about her, he stood waiting to receive the other boat
which was now returning from the ship. He saw that something unexpected
had taken place. His old parishioner was lying back in the stern,
covered with a blanket, while his son and daughter lamented over him
with the unrestraint of children. On the following day, under the stern
guard of the Puritan soldiers, there was a funeral in the little
cemetery on the hillside, and the frozen sods were heaped upon the last
Acadian grave of Grand Pre village. Remi Corveau had chosen death rather
than exile.

And what was the jewel whose loss had caused such grief to Marie
Beaugrand? For generations the great amethyst had sparkled in the front
of Blomidon, visible at intervals in certain lights and from certain
standpoints, and again unseen for months or years together. The Indians
called it "The Eye of Gluskap," and believed that to meddle with it at
all would bring down swiftly the vengeance of the demigod. Fixed high on
the steepest face of the cliff, the gem had long defied the search of
the most daring climbers. It lurked, probably, under some over-hanging
brow of ancient rock, as in a fit and inviolable setting. At length,
some years before the date of the events I have been describing, a
French sailor, fired by the far-off gleaming of the gem, had succeeded
in locating the spot of splendor. Alone, with a coil of rope, he made
his way to the top of the ancient cape. A few days later his bruised and
lifeless body was found among the rocks below the height, and taken for
burial to the little hillside cemetery by the Gaspereau. The fellow had
evidently succeeded in finding the amethyst and dislodging it from its
matrix, for when next the elfin light gleamed forth it was seen to come
from a point far down the cliff, not more than a hundred feet above the
tide.

Here it had been foun