FORT LA JOYE AND MICMAC TALES 53

Mineota is willing. She performs some Indian rites, and then slips silently into the water. At once she is carried by the monsters to the bottom of the stream to become the bride of Ossossane.

“ The deities are now appeased. Everything returns to normal. The streams flow silently again, but Kiotsaton cannot bear to leave the scene of his awful misfortune. He rebuilds his Wigwam near the stream. Soon Glooscap appears again. The spirit of the lovely Mineota will come back, he tells Kiotsaton. It will dwell in a large stone near the creek and will aid the afflicted among the Indians until the stream dries up.

“ And so it happened. Kiotsaton lived many years. When he died, Mineota’s spirit of healing still remained with the Indians. The stone was sacredly kept by the medicine men of the tribe and guarded by the Indians. It was hidden in the bottom of a spring, La Grande Source, near St. Peter’s, and was brought up only when the medicine men failed to work a cure.

“ Now the stone is gone. The creek is nearly dried up. The spirit of the lovely Indian princess hovers, perhaps, in another form over the scenes of her youth.”

But where is my audience? Gone . . . all but one . . . the little “Injun. ”

“\Vhere is the stone?” she whispers breathlessly.

“Gone ”

She crept nearer.

”Tell me some more. "

Encouragement is all that is necessary. “I’ll tell you more about the stone . . . This story begins far away in the \Vest Indies .

”Once upon a time, a French woman settled in Alabama and married a certain Captain Grandville,