tself into panels also,
reflecting the light with a dark rosy shining. Lace work finer than a
priest's white garments fluttered at the windows.

I had dived early in the afternoon, and it was night. Instead of finding
myself still stripped for swimming, I had a loose robe around me, and a
coverlet drawn up to my armpits. The couch under me was by no means of
hemlock twigs and skins, like our bunks at home: but soft and rich. I
wondered if I had died and gone to heaven; and just then the Virgin
moved past my head and stood looking down at me. I started to jump out
of a window, but felt so little power to move that I only twitched, and
pretended to be asleep, and watched her as we sighted game, with eyes
nearly shut. She had a poppet of a child on one arm that sat up instead
of leaning against her shoulder, and looked at me, too. The poppet had a
cap on its head, and was dressed in lace, and she wore a white dress
that let her neck and arms out, but covered her to the ground. This was
remarkable, as the Indian women covered their necks and arms, and wore
their petticoats short. I could see this image breathe, which was a
marvel, and the color moving under her white skin. Her eyes seemed to go
through you and search all the veins, sending a shiver of pleasure down
your back.

Now I knew after the first start that she was a living girl holding a
living baby, and when my father, Thomas Williams, appeared at the door
of the room, it was certain I could not be in heaven. It came over me in
a flash that I myself was changed. In spite of the bandages my head was
as clear as if all its faculties were washed and newly arranged. I could
look back into my life and perceive things that I had only sensed as a
dumb brute. A fish thawed out after being frozen, and reanimated through
every sparkling scale and tremulous fin, could not have felt its
resurrection more keenly. My broken head gave me no trouble at all.

The girl and baby disappeared as soon as I saw my father; which was not
surprising, for he could not be called a prepossessing half-breed. His
lower lip protruded and hung sullenly. He had heavy brows and a shaggy
thatch of hair. Our St. Regis Iroquois kept to the buckskins, though
they often had hunting shirts of fulled flannel; and my father's
buckskins were very dirty.

A little man, that I did not know was in the room, shuffled across the
floor to keep my father from entering. Around the base of his head he
had a thin