he travelled on toward the Missouri, and soon
struck the beginning of the sparse settlements. Just as evening was
coming on, he arrived at a cluster of three little log-cabins, and was
received with genuine backwoods hospitality by the proprietor, who had
married an Osage squaw. Williams was not only very hungry, but very
tired; and, after enjoying an abundant supper, he became stupid
and sleepy, and expressed a wish to lie down. The generous trapper
accordingly conducted him to one of the cabins, in which there were two
beds, standing in opposite corners of the room. He immediately threw
himself upon one, and was soon in a very deep sleep. About midnight his
slumbers were disturbed by a singular and very frightful kind of noise,
accompanied by struggling on the other bed. What it was, Williams was
entirely at a loss to understand. There were no windows in the cabin,
the door was shut, and it was as dark as Egypt. A fierce contest seemed
to be going on. There were deep groanings and hard breathings; and the
snapping of teeth appeared almost constant. For a moment the noise would
subside, then again the struggles would be renewed accompanied as before
with groaning, deep sighing, and grinding of teeth.

The captain's bed-clothes consisted of a couple of blankets and a
buffalo-robe, and as the terrible struggles continued he raised himself
up in the bed, and threw the robe around him for protection, his rifle
having been left in the cabin where his host slept, while his knife was
attached to his coat, which he had hung on the corner post of the other
bedstead from which the horrid struggles emanated. In an instant the
robe was pulled off, and he was left uncovered and unprotected; in
another moment a violent snatch carried away the blanket upon which he
was sitting, and he was nearly tumbled off the bed with it. As the next
thing might be a blow in the dark, he felt that it was high time to
shift his quarters; so he made a desperate leap from the bed, and
alighted on the opposite side of the room, calling for his host, who
immediately came to his relief by opening the door. Williams then told
him that the devil--or something as bad, he believed--was in the room,
and he wanted a light. The accommodating trapper hurried away, and in
a moment was back with a candle, the light of which soon revealed the
awful mystery. It was an Indian, who at the time was struggling in
convulsions, which he was subject to. He was a superannua