The case was most serious, and he had little hope that she would live. However, he turned to her relatives who were there and showed them the witch-charms before he burned them in the fire, concealing his doubts, for sometimes belief alone would assist a patient to recover. Now he gave her a potion to drink which would open the way to her navel — the seat of her disease — and said to her:
You tricked us, a man said to him. Why did you fail?
Tehorenhaennion regarded him calmly. — You did not give me all the presents which I asked you for, he said. Where is my pipe of red stone? Where is my tobacco pouch?
The truth was that Echon had used magic which he did not know. Echon was the most Powerful and malignant witch whom he had ever fought. He would make no covenant with him.
Corn hung yellow and bright. The pigs wanted it. They were grunting pigs with huge pink ears and dirty faces and there were flies on them. The flies wanted pigsweat and blood. Not far away, udders hung. The brown calves wanted them. And the mooing black cows with swollen brown udders, they wanted to be milked or sucked. They had great glistening eyes; they lowed loudly in the hay.
The furnace eye was uneasy. The flames curled back.
Priests stared from the open casements, knowing the furnace eye, wondering when their covenant would be burned. They watched the aqueduct drain down to the South Compound. The water continued through the narrow canal, just a canoe's width; it exited the lock all gray, narrow, a little waterfall through the square arch; and then it left the tables, candles and beds to become again the river it had been, deep and black, streaming with white reflections of palisade-poles like bones. Across the river the Iroquois crouched in hiding. They wanted everything they saw. They wanted to make everything scream and burn.
The flies came and came; they got everything. Then some corn dropped down to the pigs at last, and the pigs got it. Milk jetted from udders into pink mouths, the mouths of calves. Now practically all that's left of those days is Québec's Chapelle des Ursulines with its rose window and rose-windowed arch; but if one looks into space as one reads or rather recites from one's Bible (the eldest daughter looking up at one, the other children eyeing each other silently), it's possible to see how the furnace eye blinked and widened. But the priests never succumbed, never made any covenant, even when they canoed fleeing from their burning Mission. Yes, the fire came, and the Iroquois also gained their own desire, singing:
