he room into which the fellow had thrust her,
but it was too late--she had lost her reason. Cursing and striking and
blaspheming, Lizon was at last confronted by the priest, who told him he
had gone too far; that he had been a plague to the people and an enemy to
the church. He then pronounced against him the edict of excommunication,
and told him that even in his grave he should not rest; that the church,
abandoned by so many victims of his wiles and tyrannies, should be swept
away.
The priest left the place forthwith, and the morals of the village fell
lower and lower. Everything was against it, too. Blight and storm and
insect pest ravaged the fields and orchards, as if nature had engaged to
make an expression of the iniquity of the place. Suddenly death came upon
Lizon. A pit was dug near his tavern and he was placed in a coffin, but
as the box was lowered it was felt to grow lighter, while there poured
from it a swarm of fat and filthy snakes. The fog that overspread the
earth that morning seemed to blow by in human forms, the grave rolled
like a wave after it had been covered, and after darkness fell a blue
will-o'-the-wisp danced over it. A storm set in, heaping the billows on
shore until the church was undermined, and with a crash it fell into the
seething flood. But the curse had passed, and when a new chapel was built
the old evils had deserted L'Anse Crease.
MACKINACK
Not only was Mackinack the birthplace of Hiawatha: it was the home of God
himself--Gitchi Manitou, or Mitchi Manitou--who placed there an Indian
Adam and Eve to watch and cultivate his gardens. He also made the beaver,
that his children might eat, and they acknowledged his goodness in
oblations. Bounteous sacrifices insured entrance after death to the happy
hunting-grounds beyond the Rocky Mountains. Those who had failed in these
offerings were compelled to wander about the Great Lakes, shelterless,
and watched by unsleeping giants who were ten times the stature of
mortals.
These giants still exist, but in the form of conical rocks, one of
which-called Sugar-Loaf, or Manitou's Wigwam--is ninety feet high. A cave
in this obelisk is pointed out as Manitou's abiding-place, and it was
believed that every other spire in the group had its wraith, whence has
come the name of the island--Michillimackinack (place of great dancing
spirits). Arch Rock is the place that Manitou built to reach his home
from Sunrise Land the better. There were m
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