ing his fate. He
heard his companions tell how he had fought, conquered, and fallen,
pierced by an arrow through his breast, and how he had been left
behind among the slain on the field of battle.

"It is not true," declared the angry chief, "that I was killed and
left upon the field! I am here. I live; I move; see me; touch me. I
shall again raise my spear in battle, and take my place in the feast."

Nobody, however, seemed conscious of his presence, and his voice was
mistaken for the whispering of the wind.

He now walked to his own lodge, and there he found his wife tearing
her hair and lamenting over his fate. He endeavoured to undeceive her,
but she, like the others, appeared to be insensible of his presence,
and not to hear his voice. She sat in a despairing manner, with her
head reclining on her hands. The chief asked her to bind up his
wounds, but she made no reply. He placed his mouth close to her ear
and shouted--

"I am hungry, give me some food!"

The wife thought she heard a buzzing in her ear, and remarked it to
one who sat by. The enraged husband now summoning all his strength,
struck her a blow on the forehead. His wife raised her hand to her
head, and said to her friend--

"I feel a slight shooting pain in my head."

Foiled thus in every attempt to make himself known, the warrior-chief
began to reflect upon what he had heard in his youth, to the effect
that the spirit was sometimes permitted to leave the body and wander
about. He concluded that possibly his body might have remained upon
the field of battle, while his spirit only accompanied his returning
friends. He determined to return to the field, although it was four
days' journey away. He accordingly set out upon his way. For three
days he pursued his way without meeting anything uncommon; but on the
fourth, towards evening, as he came to the skirts of the battlefield,
he saw a fire in the path before him. He walked to one side to avoid
stepping into it, but the fire also changed its position, and was
still before him. He then went in another direction, but the
mysterious fire still crossed his path, and seemed to bar his entrance
to the scene of the conflict. In short, whichever way he took, the
fire was still before him,--no expedient seemed to avail him.

"Thou demon!" he exclaimed at length, "why dost thou bar my approach
to the field of battle? Knowest thou not that I am a spirit also, and
that I seek again to enter my body? Dost tho