in deep despair, cutting, in token of mourning, her long and floating locks, lamenting her misfortune, the loss of a cherished husband, and the desolate state of her orphan children. He strove to undeceive her, and to comfort her with words of tenderness; he sought to clasp his infants in his arms; but here again, vain and futile were his efforts; they remained insensible to his voice and his paternal caresses. The mother, bathed in tears, sat inclining her head between her hands. The chief, suffering and dejected, besought her to dress his deep wound, to apply to it the herbs and roots contained in his medicine sack; but she moved not; she answered only with tears and groans. Then he approached his mouth close to the ear of his wife, and shouted aloud,
" I am thirsty! I am hungry! Give me food and drink! " The woman thought she heard a rumbling in her ear, and spoke of it to her companions. The chief, in his vexation, struck her a severe blow on the brow. She quietly pressed her hand to the stricken place, and said, " I feel a slight headache."
Frustrated at every step, and in all his attempts to make himself known, the great chief began to reflect on what he had heard, in his youth, from the distinguished jugglers. He had learned that sometimes the spirit or soul quits the body and wanders up and down at hazard, according to its own will and pleasure. He therefore thought that perchance his body was lying on the field of battle, and that his spirit only had accompanied the warriors on their return to the village. He instantly resolved to return by the path he had pursued, at a distance of four days' march. The three first days he met no one. In the afternoon of the fourth, when approaching the battle-field, he remarked a fire in the centre of the path which he was following. Wishing to avoid it, he quitted the track; but the fire, at the same instant, changed position, and placed itself before him. In vain he tried to go from right to left, the same mysterious fire ever preceded him, as if to bar his entrance to the field of battle. " I also," said he to himself, " I am a spirit; I