m, sat beside him, beckoned to him, and smiled at him.
Never,--no, never since the world began was any scratched and battered
youth so thoroughly badgered and bewitched, as was poor March Marston on
that memorable night, by that naughty vision in leather!

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

THE CAVE OF THE WILD MAN OF THE WEST--MARCH AND MARY HOLD PLEASANT
INTERCOURSE--DICK'S GOOD QUALITIES ENLARGED ON--THE WILD MAN GIVES A
REDSKIN A STRANGE LESSON--A STARTLING INTERRUPTION TO PLEASANT CONVERSE.

When March Marston awoke the following morning, and found himself lying
on a low couch in the mysterious cavern of the Wild Man of the West, he
experienced the curious sensation, with which every one is more or less
familiar, of not knowing where he was.

The vision in leather, which had worried him to such an extent during
the night, had left him in peace--as most visions usually do--an hour or
so before daybreak, and as the real vision had not yet issued from the
inner chamber of the cave, there was nothing familiar near him when he
awoke to recall his scattered senses. His first effort to rise,
however, quickened his memory amazingly. Pains shot through all his
limbs: the chase, the fall, Dick, the cavern, recurred to him; and
last--but not least, for it obliterated and swallowed up all the rest--
the vision broke upon his beclouded brain and cleared his faculties.

Looking curiously round the cavern, he observed for the first time--what
he might have observed the night before had he not been preoccupied with
sudden, numerous, and powerful surprises--that the walls were hung with
arms and trophies of the chase. Just opposite to him hung the skin of
an enormous grisly bear, with the head and skull entire, and the mouth
and teeth grinning at him in an awful manner. Near to this were the
skin and horns of several buffaloes. In other places there were more
horns, and heads, and hides of bears of various kinds, as well as of
deer, and, conspicuous above the entrance, hung the ungainly skull and
ponderous horns of an elk.

Mingled with these, and arranged in such a manner as to prove that Dick,
or the vision--one or other, or both--were by no means destitute of
taste, hung various spears, and bows, and quivers, and shields of Indian
manufacture, with spears and bows whose form seemed to indicate that
Dick himself was their fabricator. There was much of tasteful ornament
on the sheaths and handles of many of these weapons.

The fl