time before he
could grasp his surroundings and come back to life's realities.

It was a night of intense darkness. Fierce, cold winds came shrieking
out of the dense forest, and shook the little bark tent into which he
had been thrown, and whistled through its many chinks, and made him
shiver. No cheerful fire burned in the centre, and there was not a
person in the wigwam to offer aid. Every bone and muscle in his body
seemed to ache, and his mind was so distracted and his nerves unstrung
that he was thoroughly miserable. He was nearly destitute of clothing,
for he had been carried out from the circle just as he had danced and
fallen, and now here he was nearly naked and shivering with the cold.
Vainly he felt about for his fire bag, in which he carried his flint and
steel, that he might strike a light; but in the inky darkness nothing
could be found. Only a visitor in the village, he felt, with Indian
reserve, that it would be a great breach of decorum and a sign of great
weakness if he were to call out for help, and so, in spite of his aches
and shiverings, he resolved that he would at least be a "brave," and
patiently endure until the morning brought him light and friends.

Very long indeed to Oowikapun seemed that cold, dark night. The
reaction had come, and physically and mentally he was to be pitied. His
dance had carried him very near to the verge of the dance of death. And
then owing to his vivid dream, although as yet he could not interpret
much of it, there was the vague idea, as a haunting fear, that it had
come to chide him for his cowardice in falling back and taking part in
the devil dance, after having heard of the other way. Thus filled with
sorrow there he sat on his rude bed of boughs, hour after hour, with his
locked hands clasping his knees, and his head bowed down upon his
breast.

The few sounds which broke the stillness of those hours or interrupted
the sighing of the winds were not pleasant. A great owl ensconced in a
tree not far away began and maintained for a long time its monotonous
"hoot-a-hoot a-hoo," while away in the distant forest gloom, rising at
times shrill and distinct above the fitful wind, he heard the wail of
the catamount or panther, the saddest and most mournful sound that ever
broke the solitude of forest gloom. A sound at times so like the
shrieking wail of a child in mortal agony, that heard close at hand it
has caused the face of many a brave wife of the backw