The Gift of Fernseed

I, ARTHUR SAYCE, am now thirtyseven years of age. I was born in New York State, was educated at Utica, New York, and at Columbia College. Having taken nay medical degree, I spent two years in New York hospitals, after which my next five years were passed in Europe : one year studying medicine in Berlin ; two walking the hospitals of London, — St. Thomas’s and ‘‘ Bart’s; ” and two in Paris, — the first in private study, and the second as an interne des hopitaux of the French capital. For the last eight years I have been a practicing physician in New York city, until three months ago, when I started for the North Pacific coast on a prolonged hunting trip. I give these details to show the reader that I am not ignorant of the world, no recluse, nor one likely to be easily mystified or juggled with. In no sense can I be called visionary.

In my life I have known but little sickness, and have never been subject to fits, faintings, trances, delirium, or hallucinations of any kind. It is impossible that I can have been deceived in any of tlie sensations which I experienced in the events that I am about to describe. However incredible the following narrative may seem, it is the simple, sober truth.

With this introduction (in writing which, I believe the reader will, after he has read what follows, readily acquit me of all egoism), I will proceed to the narrative itself.

It was on the 10th of May, late in the afternoon, that I arrived at the Coeur d’Alene Mission, in one of the five log cabins attached to which this story is written. I was alone, my traveling companion of the last two months, Lester Hemsley, having been recalled to New York by a message which reached him at Fort Coeur d’Alene, forwarded from Portland, Oregon. As I rode up, the sun was already low enough in the west to be shining full in the face of the Mission. The higher slopes of the mountains beyond, now all dark with the level stretch of pines, were then snow-covered (for the snow lies late on the Bitter Roots), showing in the evening sun alternations of intense black and white. On the right wound the Coeur d Alene River, fringed with scattered pines, on which the ospreys had built their nests, and patches of undergrowth of blackthorn and hazel.

In addition to the five cabins and the Mission itself, there was a seventh building, if such it could be called, a little nearer to me, on the lower ground, an Indian teepee. On the slope to the left grazed a bunch of ponies, at sight of which my own little “ buckskin” pricked up his ragged ears, and seemed to take an interest in the proceedings for the first time since we left the fort.

We had advanced to within one hundred and fifty paces of the teepee before any human life appeared. Then a party of four Indian bucks, muffled in United States military blankets, came suddenly scrambling out from behind their hut. Presumably tlie action of their own ponies on the hill had told them that something unusual was in sight. For half a minute they stood looking at me, and I could hear their voices raised in babbling astonishment. Then they all started together towards me, on a kind of running trot. At a distance of some thirty paces from me they relapsed into a walk, — or rather into the shambling, half-sliding, go-asyou-please gait which serves the Indian of the prairies for a walk. When about a dozen yards away, one of them, the oldest (and judging from the superior brilliancy of the red ochre with which the roots of his long black hair were dyed, and from the osprey feathers twisted into his locks, one holding some authority among them), darted quickly forward, and, grasping my bridle in his left hand, raised his right with a longbladed knife gleaming in it, as if to stab me. In a moment the muzzle of my Winchester rifle, which lay across the saddle in front of me, was at his chest and my finger on the trigger. For fully two or three seconds we remained so ; his arm upraised, and my rifle almost touching the blanket where it overlapped on his chest. Neither moved his eyes from the other, and what wickedlooking orbs they were that I gazed at!

Suddenly the Indian dropped his arm and broke into a laugh, in which the other three joined. Then he loosed his hold of my bridle, and the whole party shambled off up the hill in front of me, chattering and cackling with laughter, all of us heading for the Mission building.

It was probably the noise which the Indians made that brought a white man (I confess that I was glad to see him) to the door of the cabin next to the Mission, while we were still some fifty yards away. As he stepped out the sun fell full upon his face, and I could see him plainly; much better, evidently, than he could see me, riding as I was with my back to the light. Dressed in the long black robe of a priest, he looked something above medium height, spare of figure, but active-seeming and hardy. His feet were cased in moccasins. The strong sunlight in his face made him droop his head forward, so that his chin rested on the heavy black cross on his breast, his eyes looking out at me from under his prominent brows. His head was partially bald, what hair he had being of a dark iron-gray. He suffered me to approach within a dozen paces, when as I dismounted, the Indians standing silently on one side, he came towards me with outstretched hands. Taking one of my hands in each of his, he kissed me on the forehead.

Father Francis was very cordial at our first meeting, with a quiet courtesy of manner, and we had not long been seated on the little stools in his cabin before I had given him a fairly detailed history of myself and of the reasons of my arrival at the Mission. He, in turn, told me of himself and the Mission : how he had lived for a quarter of a century among the Indians ; how he had been almost alone for the last eleven months, since the Mission was deserted in the preceding June ; and how the four Indians who had welcomed me so curiously had been there but a few days, having come down from the reservation ostensibly to see if the trout were beginning to run up from the lake yet, but really, as he said, more for the pure love of wandering than anything else. The eldest of the party (my friend with the osprey feathers and wicked-looking eyes) was one Tsin-shil-zaska, one of the oldest members of the Cœur d’Alène tribe, and a medicine man of no small repute. Two of the others he called respectively Good Bear and Laughing Brave. The third was named Timothy.¹

All, he told me, spoke English fairly well; Tsin-shil-zaska in particular as well as the ordinary cultivated white man, and considerably better than the average of frontiersmen or of the private soldiers of the fort. These facts I subsequently verified by my own experience ; and it is often the case that Indians who have learned their English from the priests, and not from trappers and miners, speak purely, and frequently after a somewhat biblical fashion.

Father Francis talked at length of Tsin-shil-zaska, and always in praise of his intelligence. But it was not long before I had a better opportunity of judging the medicine man for myself than our first brief meeting had afforded.

When we had been sitting talking for perhaps an hour, and just as Father Francis was rising to make preparations for his evening meal, the Indian walked boldly, and, as it seemed to me, with rather an insolent air of importance, into the cabin. His three companions stood outside, peering in at the door. The father was already standing, so I arose, too, greeting the medicine man with the ordinary Western salute to Indians, “ How ! How ! ”

His reply was given with an air of rather lofty rebuke, in good if guttural English: “ How do you do, my friend ? You are welcome.”

I smiled, partly at his implied rebuke, and partly at the statement that I was welcome, after his manner of receiving me outside.

“ You did not tell me so before ? ” I said interrogatively.

“No. Tsin-shil-zaska tried you, whether you were a coward or not.”

“ And am I ? ”

“ He cannot tell yet. A man is brave the first time, and a coward the next.

A man who is a coward the first time is always a coward.”

Father Francis then asked him how the fish were coming up. I forget his answer, and after a few more desultory remarks the conversation dropped.

It had not been my intention to stay at the Mission more than one day. I have now been here for three months. The causes of this change of programme, and the circumstances through which my first instinctive dislike of Tsin-shilzaska ripened into an open quarrel with him, I will tell as briefly as possible.

The morning after my arrival, Timothy met with an accident. He was cutting a branch from one of the thorn bushes by the river, when his knife slipped, and, with the whole strength of his arm behind it, cut a terrible gash in the poor fellow’s thigh. His companions carried him into the father’s cabin, where the good priest dressed the wound with a simple poultice of wild parsnip as deftly and effectively as it could have been done by the best of surgeons; declining my proffered aid on the grounds that the Indians had full confidence in him as a physician, and that his own knowledge was in fact ample for so simple a hurt.

During the operation. Tsin-shil-zaska had stood looking on with an air of supercilious contempt which exasperated me. Later in the day, when Timothy was lying on the grass by the side of the teepee, I happened to pass close by at the moment when Tsin-shil-zaska was operating upon him in his capacity of medicine man. He had removed the father’s carefully placed bandages, and was going through some incantation accompanied with extravagant gesticulations. These mummeries completed, he spat upon the wound, and replaced the bandages with at least as much clumsiness as the father had used dexterity. The sight made me inwardly furious, and it was with difficulty that I restrained myself from rudely interfering then and there.

It was the custom of Father Francis to hold prayer twice daily, morning and evening, in the Mission House. These services any stranger who was at the Mission attended, as a matter of course. That evening, upon issuing from the building after service, Tsin-shil-zaska, who had preceded me, was standing close by the door, looking westward at the setting sun. My resentment was still strong within me as I stopped to ask him, rather sneeringly, how his patient prospered.

“ The treatment of the good father is always successful,” said he, without removing his eyes from the horizon.

“ But you have taken this case out of the good father’s hands. Did I not see you doctoring Timothy yourself ? ”

“Huh! ” (The Indian never loses his guttural ejaculations.) “ Tsin-shil-zaska does what he can to help the good father.”

The idea of his professing to be able, with his fooleries, to give any assistance to Father Francis provoked me further. I do not know now quite how the conversation that followed ran, but it resulted, and that quickly, in my telling Tsin-shilzaska plainly what I thought of him and his skill as a practitioner, and winding up with my calling him a “ quack,” which he probably did not understand, and a “hypocrite,” which he evidently did. Then for the first time he shifted his eyes from the far-off landscape, and they gleamed more wickedly than ever as he fixed them on mine.

“ Huh ! Tsin-shil-zaska does not speak so to the Man-with-the-little-rifle.” (So, as I had already learned from Father Francis, the Indians had, in reference to a 44-calibre Colt’s which I carried, named me.) “He has not said that you are a hypocrite and that you know nothing. The medicine man cannot cure ? Huh ! The wild goat on the mountain, when shot with an arrow, knows what plant to eat to make the wounds close and the arrow fall.² The hurt beaver medicines himself. The wolf, when hunted, if given time to eat what leaves he chooses, makes himself invisible. The dog, there, has learned when to eat the grass to make him vomit. The birds of the air know what food will hurt them and what will do them good. Has the Indian, being wiser, learned nothing of all these ? The Man-with-the-little-rifle will know better.”

With which he huddled his blanket closer around his chin, gave one more guttural grunt, and shambled noiselessly away; his retreating figure black between me and the red sunset sky.

The next day saw me in better temper. Tsin-shil-zaska did not appear, and the statement of Good Bear that he had gone into the mountains " to find medicines ” only made me laugh.

The day following I went out for a long excursion, on foot, up the river, taking my rifle in the hopes of a shot at a bear. Deer there were in plenty, but, though no lack of “ bear signs,” no bear; and I returned in the middle of the afternoon, hot and tired. The whole day had been spent in climbing up hills and over crags, and scrambling through brush skirting the snow. The sun was hot (as the Pacific sun can be in May), and my shoulder was fatigued by the weight of the rifle. On my return, I determined to undress and take a sponge bath in my cabin; so, having drawn a pail of water from the well and carried it inside, I moved the table into a corner, and proceeded to strip off my clothes. As I was standing “ mother naked,” sponge in hand, looking at the water, and wondering whether the first douche would be too abominably cold, the door was suddenly pushed open, and Tsin-shil-zaska walked unceremoniously in. I was indignant at the intrusion and the high-handed manner of it, and at first was disposed to order the intruder out. Then, feeling a natural bashfulness, I cast about for something wherewith to cover my nakedness. In my hand was nothing but the small sponge, and no garment lay within easy reach. But, on reflection, it occurred to me that my visitor was, underneath his one blanket, but little more dressed than myself.

The Indian has, in the matter of nudity, no sense of what we are pleased to call the proprieties, and I doubt whether the medicine man had any idea of the awkwardness which, however illogically, I could not help feeling. But subsequent events convinced me that he had been watching me through some cranny in the log wall, — which contained plenty, — and had chosen the moment of his entrance with deliberate intent. His back was, of course, to the light, as he entered, and even when he had shuffled close up to me I could not see his face. When within a few feet of where I was standing, he thrust out one arm from under the blanket.

“Tsin-shil-zaska has brought the Man-with-the-little-rifle some medicine,” he said, “ that he may know the Indian has learned something.”

In the hand which he extended to me was a small vial, — given him, presumably, at some time by one of the fathers, — corked with a knot of grass. The vial was almost full of a brownish liquor, of the color of tincture of arnica, — perhaps a tablespoonful or more. I looked at him and then at the vial.

“ And what am I to do with it ? Drink it ? ”

“ Huh ! ” with an accent of assent. “ The Man-with-the-little-rifle will see whether Tsin - shil - zaska knows anything.”

“ And does Tsin-shil-zaska take me for a fool ? ”

The only response was a decidedly non-committal grunt. The question of my foolishness was an open one. The hand with the vial was still extended to me.

“ How do I know that it is not poison, and will kill me ? ”

“ Tsin-shil-zaska does not kill. He cures people.”

“ But I am not sick, and need no curing.”

And then silence, the Indian’s strongest and favorite argument. At last he spoke : “Will not the Man-with-the-little rifle-drink ? Will the man who was brave the first time be a coward the next? ”

The wily old savage ! Still I hesitated. “ So this is only to test my courage ? And if it kills me ? ”

“ Tsin-shil-zaska would not hurt a friend of the good father’s. If the Man-with-the-little-rifle had come to Tsin-shil-zaska, and said, ‘ Drink,’ he would have done so.”

Again, as in the wrangle of the preceding evening, I felt that he had distinctly the advantage of me in argument. I was discomfited.

“ What is it ? ” I asked, reaching out my hand for the vial. He let me take it readily. Holding the liquor against the light, I saw that it was semi-opaque, with small particles of fibrous matter floating in it, and slightly gummy, — about as fluid as glycerine.

I took out the grass stopper, and smelled the liquor. The odor was new to me, — pungent, but not strong, and very herby.

“ What is it? ” I asked again.

“ It is precious, and Tsin-shil-zaska knows no name for it.”

“ But what is it going to do to me ? ” “Will the Man - with - the - little - rifle drink it and learn ? ”

If I could only see his face ! But the strong light of the door behind me made it impossible. However, I reasoned, if it had been really a dangerous drug, he would never have come to me so openly with it. At all events, it is a physician’s duty to experiment with new medicines on himself, if no more convenient subject offers. I remembered Emerson’s advice: “ Always do what you are afraid to do! ” So I walked across the cabin, laid the sponge, which I was still holding in my left hand, on the table, and returned with a tin cup. As I was about to pour the liquid into the cup, Tsin-shil-zaska reached forward and took both from me. Dipping up perhaps a wineglassful of water from the pail which was to serve as my bathtub, he emptied the mysterious liquid into it, finally rinsing the vial out in the mixture, which he handed to me. I hesitated a moment, smelled it, sipped it, and then swallowed it in a couple of mouthfuls, and threw the cup on the bunk. It had no particular taste; or rather it tasted faintly, as it smelled.

“ Well, what now ? ” I asked.

“ Huh! The Man-with-the-little-rifle will soon know.” And with that he gathered his blanket closer around the neck, and shuffled off.

I laughed rather angrily at myself for the ridiculousness of the whole affair, and (for I was beginning to feel chilled) ran briskly across to fetch the sponge, and returned to resume my interrupted bath. Stooping to plunge the sponge into the water, I became aware that the drug was beginning to have some effect upon me, and straightened myself up again. Yes, there was no doubt of it. I felt a distinct sensation as of incipient intoxication. I was exhilarated and slightly dizzy. I braced myself, and, planting my feet firmly, threw my shoulders back, to try to shake the feelings off. No ; they only increased with great rapidity. The blood was bounding through my veins, and my spirits rose higher (for I am a sober, matter - of - fact person ordinarily) than I ever knew them to in my life. I laughed aloud at myself, and jumped into the air from very joyfulness. Then the absurdity of my conduct struck me, and I proceeded gravely to remonstrate with myself, aloud. The next moment I had kicked the sponge up to the ceiling, and upset the pail of water over the floor, — a joke which struck me as so irresistibly humorous that I was obliged to sit down on a stool and laugh, till the cabin rang again with my hysterical guffaws.

There followed a series of sensations which I will do my best to describe accurately, for they were sensations such as no man, as I firmly believe, who has ever walked the hospitals of New York, London, or Paris, has felt, either before or since.

I have spoken of dizziness. That increased in intensity with every second, and I seemed to be passing in rapid succession through all the stages of intoxication. Stories of various drinks of savage people came into my head, and I distinctly remember that the account of a native Burmese drink of which I have read somewhere, which will dissolve a Martini Henry rifle-ball in thirty seconds, flashed into my mind.

“And now,” I maudlinly commented, “ it is dissolving the Man-with-the-littlerifle himself; ” and again I laughed uproariously.

But the hilarity was of short duration. As the dizziness continued to increase, the cabin began to sway and the floor to heave, until I had to rock myself backwards and forwards, my head sunk on my bosom, to keep from falling off the stool. Nausea succeeded, and I made two or three ineffectual attempts to vomit, like a man in the extremity of seasickness.

So far, however, the sensations had not differed from those of ordinary intoxication. But now a new one mingled with the nausea and dizziness. In my time I have experimented upon myself with, I think, every narcotic and anodyne known to the pharmacopœia, and have described the sensations of each experiment in my diary. The one which I now experienced differed from anything that I had ever described myself or seen described by others. In fact, it almost baffled analysis or description. Even now, I am not entirely sure that my memory of it is not largely tinged by the subsequent knowledge of its results.

As I remember it, it commenced first in my extremities, but had soon distributed itself over my whole frame. There is only one word by which I can describe the process which then seemed to be going on in me, — the process of disintegration ! Every part of my body, solids and fluids, bone, blood, and tissue, was in independent and multitudinous motion, as if each tissue were resolving itself into its component cells, and each cell into its primordial atoms. It was not painful. But for the accompanying nausea and dizziness, it might have been positively pleasurable. The sensation, though intense in each member, was not to be located anywhere, but was evenly distributed from the marrow of my spine to the cuticle of my finger-tips. The motion of the particles seemed to grow wiider and more rapid. My whole being seethed and boiled. It was as the ultimate dissolution of my very fabric.

Almost blind in my dizziness, I rose from the stool, and staggered to the bunk. I fell on my knees as I reached it, and then dragged myself laboriously up and on to it. The cabin rocked and swayed; the motion in me appeared to grow into — not to produce, but to grow into — sound, horrid, tumultuous, muffled but overwhelming; a surging of chaotic but rhythmical murmurs.

Things grew indistinct before my eyes. The motion in me communicated itself to surrounding objects. Everywhere was wreck, chaos, dissolution. Just before final blackness closed in on me, I remember seeing the form of Tsin - shil - zaska, almost filling the doorway. That was my last definite impression. Then came deathly nausea, retching that racked my very life, external blackness and unutterable tumult,— and I lost consciousness.

When I emerged from the state of coma which ensued, it was early morning, dull and misty and gray, as I saw through the cabin door, which stood wide open. There was no difficulty in picking up the thread of memory. As soon as my consciousness returned, I found myself lying, still “ mother naked,” on my back. I recollected perfectly where I was, how I came there, and all the incidents of Tsin-shil-zaska’s visit and the drinking of the drug.

My first serious thought was about the drug itself. What was it? Evidently a powerful narcotic. Violent in its operations, certainly; but the medicine man had given me a pretty strong dose, as my long lethargy (which must have extended over some fifteen hours) sufficiently testified. In skillful hands, and after careful experimenting to ascertain its strength, it might prove to be of considerable value. I must make Tsin-shil-zaska show me the plant.

Having arrived at which conclusion,

I proceeded to raise myself on my elbow and sit up. Somehow I did not feel quite myself yet. I was perfectly conscious and had all my senses, except, apparently, one. My hearing was good, for the monotonous “see-se-se—sawaw-aw " of a myrtle robin came at regular intervals from some tree behind the cabin, accompanied now and again by the hurried tap-tapping of a woodpecker somewhere in the further distance. I could certainly see, though there was not much to look at, the interior of the cabin, dim and dark, the door being merely a parallelogram of pearl-gray mist in the surrounding obscurity. For my sense of smell, — that was excellent, as the pungent scent of moist earth which came in on the morning air, telling of rain during the night, assured me.

But I had no sense of touch ! Since first consciousness returned I had been aware of a curious sensation of — what shall I say ? — unsubstantiality. You know how, in the moments between sleep and waking, you lie insensible of the contact between yourself and the bedclothes, yourself imponderable, the bed beneath and the covers above you without substance. That same sensation Had been present with me since my awakening, but with an infinitely greater sense of reality, for I was not now anything but wide awake. When I put my hand on the wooden side of the bunk and raised myself to a sitting posture, there had been no sensation of contact as my palm touched the wood. I reached out my fingers to the rough logs which composed the wall. It was the same. I could feel nothing. I tried my foot. Again the same.

Yet my members were not dead. The circulation appeared to be normal, for I had perfect control over all my limbs. When I raised my leg and let it fall on the bunk again, it fell quite naturally; not at all heavily or lifelessly, as in a case of ordinary perverted sensation. Still, I could not feel it strike the bed. The more I became assured that this senselessness was a fact, the more convinced I was that the drug which had caused it would be of considerable value to surgeons as an anæsthetic. I must learn its nature at once.

With this resolve, I flung my legs over the edge of the bunk, and dropped to the floor. Strange ! I was certainly standing, but without sense of anything under my feet. I walked. My limbs obeyed me. My feet rested normally on the floor. There was no tendency to lose my balance ; my muscles supported me perfectly; but I could feel nothing.

I jumped into the air, stamped, ran a step or two, — the result was the same. So I sat down (having to look behind me to be sure that my person was actually in contact with the stool) to think it all over.

As I sat, it occurred to me that the room had been changed since I last saw it; and — where were my clothes ?

Then it became plain to me. That miserable Tsin-shil-zaska had drugged me with deliberate intention of robbery.

I remembered his coming into the cabin just before I became insensible, and doubtless he had then carried off my wardrobe. Yes, my rifle was gone, too, and my revolver. He had made a clean sweep while he was about it.

No, my saddle, with an India-rubber saddle-bag attached, was left, and I could dress myself in the shirt and pair of socks which were all the change of wardrobe that I carried, and so make my way to the cabin of Father Francis, and lodge complaint against the medicine man. The table stood in the corner made by one of the side walls and the projecting end of the bunk. The bag was beneath the foot of the bunk, and therefore partly under the table. It would be easier for me to move the table than to creep under it on my hands and knees to reach the bag. So I took hold of the table to move it. I grasped it, as far as a man with no feeling in his finger-ends could grasp anything, and pulled. Not an inch did it stir. I pulled, and pushed, and shook (or tried to shake), and pulled, and pushed, and shook again. It would have done as much good to have pulled, and pushed, and shaken at the Rocky Mountains. If I could only have had the satisfaction of feeling that I was really grasping it, that would have soothed me somewhat. But this utter numbness was maddening, and my wrath against Tsin-shil-zaska grew strong.

However, there was nothing for it now but to get into the limited costume at my disposal as quickly as possible, and make my way to headquarters and make my complaint. So I dropped on all fours, without feeling when my hands rested on the floor, and, crawling under the table, endeavored to grasp the bag. I say “endeavored,” because I really could not say whether I did grasp it or not. I thought that I caught hold of it, and so far as my eyes could teach me my fingers were actually inclosing a part of it. But it w as rooted as firmly as the table. If I pulled at it, my fingers simply came away from it, no matter how firm a grip I thought I had taken. They did not slip off, they simply came, away, — ceased any longer to be in contact with it. My hand was as nerveless as it was senseless. I was still tugging and gripping with what seemed a preposterous waste of energy, considering the smallness of the object that I was tugging at, but without the smallest result, when I became aware that some one had entered the cabin. My position was not dignified,—my head and shoulders under the table, and the rest of my naked person protruding into the light towards the new-comer, whoever he was. So I scrambled out backwards as fast as I could, and rose to my feet. It was the father. His back was to the light, but as I arose I saw by the motion of his head that he was looking around the room in search of something or some one ; then he deliberately turned around and walked out again.

“ Father ! Oh! Good-morning, father ! ”

But he evidently did not hear me. It was very curious. If his face had not at one time been directed full towards me, I could have declared that he had not seen me. It was true that the light was dim, but a naked man, six feet and one inch in height, suddenly springing from all fours to his feet, is a fairly conspicuous object at the distance of some three paces, — calculated at least to catch the eye of a man of ordinary clearness of vision.

I ran to the door, and, resting a hand on the post on either side, thrust my head out. The father’s retreating form was some ten yards from me. I called him, and called again. He kept on his way, turned into the door of his cabin, and disappeared. Certainly he did not hear me. Was he deaf as well as blind? But my voice, I was obliged to confess to myself, was weak. I called again, as an experiment. Yes, it was very weak, — thin and bodiless. It was not the fault of my hearing, because the distant scream of an osprey came plainly to my ears, and a flight of Alpine grosbeaks (birds which are very plentiful about Lake Cœur d’Alène), which flew jerkily over the cabin at that moment, filled the air with twittered music.

For fully a minute I stood there wondering what I was to do. I could not feel that my hands were resting on the posts of the door, though they were visibly doing so, or I should have fallen forward on my face ; nor could I feel that my feet touched the ground. Then I commenced feeling all over the door and the rough ends of the jutting logs, where they had been chopped off to leave the doorway space. How solid, and hard, and unsympathetic it all was to my numb touch and nerveless fingers!

In pure exasperation, I slapped the door-post with my open hand, and a new horror dawned upon me. There was no noise when the hand came in contact with the wood. I tried again, and again, and again, harder and louder; not a sound. I clapped my two hands together, but neither sound nor scnse of touch told me when they met. It was very ghostly. I searched for anything that was resonant to strike. I smote the flat surface of the door. It neither trembled nor emitted any sound. I went back to the table, and struck that, — slapped both palms down on it simultaneously with all my force. It was useless. When my hands reached the wooden surface on their downward course, they stopped, ceased to go any further, but the impact had not the smallest effect either on the table or on my hands.

And an unutterable terror crept into me ; a hideous, indescribable feeling of unreality, as if I were out of all relation to the world around. Was it, after all, a dream ? I reached out my hand to the walls, and could feel nothing. I struck the table again, and not a sound came from it. Was I in a world of shadows, or — and my heart sank as the thought came to me — was I a shadow in a world of realities ? How utterly nerveless, powerless, unsubstantial, I was beside these great, black, rugged, unresponsive log walls ! I called aloud, and my voice came to me thinly, as if from a distance. An ineffable hopelessness came over me, and I sank on my knees by the table, and buried my numb face on my senseless arms

All the horrors that followed have failed to weaken the memory of that moment of overwhelming and nameless terror. As I sit now writing at that same table, and look around at these same rough walls, an echo of that feeling of hopelessness comes back to me, and I smite my clenched knuckles on the resounding board, to make sure that it rings at the stroke, and that things are realities once more.

How long that supreme sense of terror lasted I do not know; probably some ten minutes or a quarter of an hour. But slowly a feeling which had from the first been combating, and to some extent mitigating, the miseries of the situation began to possess me, and to restore me to my normal self, — the feeling of professional curiosity as to the nature of the drug under the influence of which I then was. A very devil’s potion it seemed. Certainly its action on me had been violent and crippling. But the stronger its properties proved, the more important its addition to the pharmacopœia would ultimately be. As I rose to my feet from my kneeling posture, a blue jay fluttered down with a dissonant “ charr-rr-rr,” and perched itself, head inside the cabin, in the doorway, looking dull and bedraggled in the damp air. I raised my arm and cursed the bird in stern Anglo-Saxon, whereat it tumbled precipitately backwards, and flew clamorously headlong into the mist. Come ! It was a comfort to find some external thing that would still recognize and respect my existence. I yet bad some relation to the things of the world.

Walking to the door, I leaned against one of the posts and looked out. Four figures were approaching from the direction of the father’s cabin; and it was with something which was almost joy thal I counted them, and knew that Tsin-shil-zaska was still at the Mission, and that I might hope to recover my properties and revenge myself.

They advanced slowly: the father with bowed head and downcast eyes; the Indians with heads erect and eyes gazing into the mist, as if they rested on the distant landscape beyond. They were evidently coming straight to my door, so I drew a pace or so inside, and awaited them with a deprecatory smile, apologetic for my nudity, on my face.

The father, after a moment’s hesitation in the doorway, stepped in first, and his lips moved in murmured blessing. Tsin-shil-zaska followed. The others remained outside. I stood a yard and a half, perhaps, back from the entrance, waiting awkwardly for the good priest’s salutation. But —

Even now, sitting writing this on almost the very spot on which I stood then, and with every detail of what passed imprinted—ah, how clearly — on my memory, I cannot accurately describe the utter horror of the minutes which followed.

In the first place, no salutation came. The eyes of the Indian, as he entered, shifted in one rapid glance around the cabin, and then fixed themselves, not on the wall, but on the distance beyond it. Father Francis began, with an expression of deepest anxiety on his face, to search the cabin in detail with his eyes. I was standing in front of him, slightly to his left hand (what a sailor would call on his port bow), directly between him and the table where it stood pushed into the corner. His scrutiny began at the corner to his and the doorway’s left, to my right, and, after resting there a moment, passed along the wall, shifting from the floor upwards to the table — and me. For fully a minute again his eyes rested on me, — on my chest, dropping to my knee, passing from right shoulder to left, and from left elbow back to right. But I knew that it was not I that he was looking at, — not my chest, nor knee, nor shoulder, nor elbow.

He was looking through me at the table, under it, up to the bunk, from one side to the other ; then, following the corner post, up to the ceiling.

It is useless for me to attempt to describe the sensation of that moment of terror. People have been buried alive, conscious the whole time, and have lived to tell of it. Men have kneeled on the scaffold, awaiting the fall of the axe which never fell, and have recalled afterwards the sensations of those last moments before the joyful shout announced the reprieve. But never, as I believe now, has such mental agony been allotted to mortal man as in those moments seemed to arrest my very being. I strove to speak, but my tongue refused its office. I reached out my hand, and let it feebly fall again. Again I tried to articulate, and at last the word came : —

“ Father ! ”

But how thin, and weak, and how far away! Obviously he heard it not. Even I could hardly say whether I heard it, whether it had actually come in external words to my ear, or whether it had simply passed to my brain over the internal currents of my nerves.

It was Father Francis who spoke : — “ You have not heard the report of his rifle, my son, since he left ? ”

“ Huh ! ” with negative accent.

“ Yet one of you, with your keen hearing, would surely have heard it had he fired ? ”

“ Huh ! ” This time in the affirmative. And it was I of whom they were speaking as of one absent; I, who stood here so close to the father that we could have clasped hands without either of us moving; I, who heard their every syllable, but could not make my voice heard in reply; I, present here before their very eyes, in daylight, unseen and — invisible ! And the memory of Tsinshil-zaska’s words came back to me : —

“ The wolf, when hunted, if given time to eat what leaves he chooses, makes himself invisible. Has the Indian, being wiser, learned nothing of all this ? ”

Of the events which followed, when the first agony of the discovery of my condition had passed, my memory is vague and confused. I remember them only as a man may recall some stray shreds of the tangled visions which came to him in delirium.

Father Francis and the Indian stayed some time in the cabin, I know, the father at intervals advancing suggestions as to my whereabouts. I know too that in those moments I called and prayed to them to see me. I brandished my hands in their faces ; fell at their feet, and clutched the skirts of the father’s robe, which moved not as my nerveless fingers touched it. I struck Tsin-shilzaska in the face with my clenched fist, and not so much as an eyelid trembled.

I raved and wept, and shouted in their ears, and they stood unconscious of my presence. I flung myself before their feet as they turned to go, and their feet brushed me aside, without my feeling the contact or having strength to resist.

They did not so much as check in their gait. I might have been “ thin as air ; ” apparently, to them, I was. Once, when they had traversed half the distance to the father’s cabin, I still following, and clinging, or trying to cling, to them as they went, the good priest stopped, and turning abruptly to his companion said : —

“And thou, my son, knowest nothing of him ? ”

Gravely, sternly, seareliingly, he looked the Indian in the eyes. But the other, — the red scoundrel ! — how firmly he bore the scrutiny ! Not a muscle of his face moved. He assumed no look of injured innocence. There was no over-acting. Unconcerned, imperturbable, he gazed back into and through the father’s eyes.

“Of the Man - with - the - little - rifle ? Tsin-shil-zaska knows nothing of him.”

“But you quarreled with him, my son ? ”

“ Huh! ”

For an instant longer the father looked him in the face ; then turned and walked on. It was impossible to guess whether his suspicions were entirely overcome or not. I longed to tell him to go on questioning, — to thrust home and spare not. and probe till he had forced the truth from the Indian’s heart. But I could not. I was powerless, hopeless, substanceless.

As the day wore on and the white mist began to lift from the mountain slopes, lingering in thick flakes and scarves about the pine boughs, Father Francis organized a search expedition for me. The Indians started in a body up the river - bank, while the father himself struck into the hills behind the Mission. I stayed behind, desolate and hopeless.

Soon after noon, — a dull, sodden day it was, — the Indians returned ; and an hour or so later, the father too came back. The father spent most of the evening on his knees, coming out occasionally into the air to look and listen for any signs of me, while I would stand hopeless by his cabin door, and try again and again to make him understand that I was by his side. Late into the night his candle burned, reddening the rough inside of the cabin, and just showing the outline of the black figure that kneeled before the crucifix in prayer.

Another day came and went. The forenoon was again spent in search for me, — though the Indians only started off in a perfunctory, listless way, and returned again within an hour,—and all the evening and night the good priest remained on his knees, praying, as I knew, for me.

For myself, I needed neither sleep nor nourishment. At night I wandered about the moonlit slope, wondering whether ghosts felt as miserable as I; or sat in the doorway of my cabin, occasionally, but rarely, throwing myself on my bunk, and lying there, longing to know how long this would last, and cursing Tsin-shil-zaska in my heart. Whatever change had come over my being, however thin and substanceless I might be (I had soon discovered that I threw no shadow), it was evident that my specific gravity was still appreciably greater than that of the atmosphere. I walked, and sat, and moved, — the law of gravitation affected me, — as though I were still solid and of ordinary fleshly weight. Only in relation to other substances and beings did I feel inferiority; and there were moments of solitude when I would actually forget my condition. Nor, in those first days, did it ever occur to me that my disembodiment, or etherealization, could be anything more than a temporary affection, which would last only so long as the operation of the drug continued active.

But one day I made a discovery, — curious at first, horrible afterwards. It was on the afternoon of the third day — a variable afternoon of alternate cloud and sunshine — that I was standing in front of the Mission, in the centre of the crescent of cabins, when the five ponies, which wandered at will on the foot-hills, unhobbled, came walking in single file towards the river.

I was directly in their line of march, and as the first one approached me — a small dapple-gray, rat-like animal, with pink nose and ropy tail — I reached out my hand to its forelock. The animal at once flung its head aside and avoided my touch. Could it have been only an accident ? I hurried after it, and placed myself again in its path. Again it swerved aside, and deliberately walked around me. I laid my hand on its flank. It winced, shambled on a step or two, changed feet, and broke into a lope. The second pony had reached me by this time. The same series of experiments had a like effect, and all five were soon going at a canter towards the river.

There could be no question of it. The ponies recognized my presence. Here, as I have said, was a discovery (and now I remembered the blue jay) which might prove useful to me. At any rate, it was infinitely consoling to know that I still had some appreciable properties. It detracted something from the unutterable feeling of isolation which oppressed me, afforded me some shadow of a semblance of companionship in my solitariness, and I proceeded to make the most of it.

I have once referred indirectly to the presence of a dog at the Mission, — one of the hungry, half-coyote, pariah curs which are attached to every Indian camp or caravan. When the ponies had left me, I turned my attention to this dog, which was lying on the grass beside the teepee. As I drew near, his eyes opened and his ears went back, and when I reached out my hand to pat him he drew his head away, sat up on his haunches, — still keeping out of my reach, — and at last got up and slunk off. He trotted a few paces around me in a half circle, and then lay down again, but evidently uneasily. I approached once more ; and again he evaded me. So, for some minutes, I kept him shifting his ground, until he refused to lie down at all, but stood, tail down, waiting wearily for me to go and leave him alone. That I refused to do. Presently he grew tired of being hunted, and commenced to whimper, — a low, whistling whimper at first, and then growing louder and louder. Finally, as I made a pounce at him, he fairly turned tail and fled, howling dolorously, into the teepee.

The quotation from the Koran came into my mind, and then a sudden horror seized me.

“ Angel of Death ! ” The time since my first awakening from the coma had been divided into three stages, or periods, by three moments of supreme terror. The first was the terror of unreality, when the feeling of my lack of relationship to the substances around me had first come over me. The second was the terror of invisibility, when I first knew that Father Francis and the Indian did not see me. Last came the terror of death.

Could this be death? Was I dead ?

Again and again, at night-time chiefly, I had thought of myself as ghost-like. But was I really a ghost? How could I deny it ? What knowledge had I of the state beyond the grave, to be sure that this was not the common form of departed spirits ? I thought of all the men of whom I knew, from Socrates downwards, who have believed in the presence of demons, or angels, or genii, or the spirits of dead fellow-men, invisible, on earth. What assurance had I that my condition was exceptional, — that I was not sharing the common lot that conies to all men after death ? I needed no food to support me. Perhaps it was only an ordinary, though to me unknown, poison that had been given me, and no drug of mysterious potency. But no, I thought, with sudden relief, that cannot be. Where, if so, is my body, — my (how I shuddered at the thought!) corpse? The relief, however, was short-lived. Why could not Tsinshil-zaska have hidden my body as easily as he had hidden my clothes and rifle ? And I found myself actually sweeping the horizon with my eyes, to see if anywhere over the tree-tops I could see hovering the tell-tale buzzards or carrion crows, to show me where my own corpse lay.

For the first time it occurred to me with any force that perhaps my state was something more than a temporary affection, dependent upon the continued action of a drug. For the first time I thought that an eternity of this wretchedness might lie before me. How could I tell that there were not other spirits around me, invisible to me as I was invisible to living men ; or, if not here on the lonely hill slope, how did I know that in the cities and haunts of men there might not be walking millions such as I ? The thought was horrid in its possibility, utterly overwhelming in its bewildering immensity.

Then I fell upon my knees on the sunlit grass, and prayed as only a man in the supremest agonies can pray. From that moment I have never ceased to be devoutly thankful for the sustaining hope which was always with me. I arose from my knees full of confidence. It was easy for me to prove by irrefutable logic that the probabilities were enormously in favor of my being dead, — that I must be dead. But I never in my heart convinced myself, logic to the contrary notwithstanding. I knew inwardly that I lived still as mortals live, — that the life which enabled me to move, and think, and pray, was yet, in spite of the awful change that I had suffered, the same life as had always animated me, and as now animated other men. An instinct which I could not justify to reason bore me up against my own arguments, and that instinct, implanted, or at least first developed, in those moments of prayer, alone, I believe, prevented my reason from being dethroned.

Henceforward, however, the pleasure of the mute companionship of beasts was gone. Occasionally I would stop to pat the dog or make a pony move from its path, to assure myself that I still had some hold upon the world of external things. But such experiments were ever accompanied with a chilling return of the thought of death and an echo of those agonies of doubt. I did not often try them.

So day followed day, and I still wandered about the Mission, naked in my own eyes, invisible to others, voiceless to all human ears hut my own, insensible to the changes of temperature, needing neither sleep nor nourishment, and senseless and numb of touch. The father had given up the search for me, though his eyes would wander mournfully from my cabin to the distant hills, and from there to heaven, when his lips would move in silent prayer.

How, in those days, I learned to love and honor Father Francis ! And for Tsin-shil-zaska my hatred increased. He and his three companions still hung around the Mission, ostensibly to waittill they could take back the news that the trout had run up stream. They divided their time between sitting on the ground about the teepee and sitting on the ground by the river’s bank. Occasionally, they mounted their ponies and went off, aimlessly as it seemed, for half a day’s ride over the plains and foothills. Timothy was still an invalid.

I had lived thus for a week, — what a week ! — when I made another discovery, of more importance than the last.

It was mid-afternoon, — still and hot as a Pacific coast spring day can be, — the air shimmering with heat, and the last year’s butterflies, which fluttered round the walls of the Mission and sat fanning their wings in the warm rays, seeming the only things moving.

I was sitting listlessly in the door of my cabin. Opposite me, the flap of canvas which made the door of the teepee was caught back with a twopronged peg of bone, and in the shadow within, I. knew, lay Timothy, alone. Drawn by idle curiosity, I crossed the intervening space and entered the tent. In spite of the open door and central hole at the apex of the roof, the air within was thick and heavy with that oppressive smell —part grease, part dirt, and part humanity — which clings to the Indian wherever he goes. In the gloom I could just distinguish the form of Timothy, stretching almost from side to side of the narrow tent. The only other contents of the place were a heap of skins and furs, scraps of dried meat, tin cups, saddles, rope, and innumerable other miscellaneous but indistinguishable things, such as the Indian loves to accumulate, which covered probably one third of the entire floor space.

Timothy was evidently asleep. There was no other seat there, so, conscious of my imponderability, but with no particular intent, I seated myself on him. As I rested on him he moved, muttered uneasily in his sleep, and then rolled round from his right side to his left, throwing me off. As soon as he was quiet, I resumed my seat. No sooner had I done so, however, than he commenced to toss again, this time suddenly, and heaving me, staggering, against the further side of the tent.

Could it be possible that he was conscious of my presence ? I did not believe it, but determined to see. So. dropping on my knees by his side, I passed my hand once or twice over his face. Yes, he felt it. Drowsily he shook his head, as if to free himself from my hand, and, when I removed it, lay still again. By this time I had become excited and keenly hopeful. Again I touched his face, weighed against his side, and passed my hand over his frowzy, tangled hair. Yes, he stirred as before.

“ Timothy ! ” I called. “ Timothy ! Wake up ! I am here ! Do you hear me ? Timothy ! ”

Slowly his head rolled from side to side, and his lips began to move. Eagerly I bent my head to catch his words, but he made only an indistinguishable murmuring. Again I called and shook, or feried to shake him. Once more his lips moved, and brokenly among the mutterings I caught my name, — “ Manwith-the-little-rifle.”

“Yes! Yes! Timothy,” — how I was thrilling with excitement! — “the Man-with-the-little-rifle is here! He is speaking to you now! Do you hear him ? Timothy ! ”

But the response was inaudible. Excited almost to frenzy, I called and called again, shook him, and threw myself upon him. Suddenlyh he reached out his arms, and, with a cry of pain, awoke. There was a startled look in his eyes, I could see in the gloom, as though he expected to find somebody there. I waited, hardly daring to breathe in my suspense. But the look died away. Evidently I was as invisible to him as ever. He pulled himself up to a half-sitting posture, and, leaning against one of the poles of the teepee, remained wide awake, with his eyes staring out through the open door into the sunlight.

Awake he was utterly unconscious of my presence, but asleep he was sensible of my touch and heard my voice. Was it possible that between human beings, when asleep, and myself there existed some such affinity as was evident between myself and brutes ? Altogether incapable of making my presence felt by people when awake, was it possible that I could place myself en rapport with them when asleep ? So it must be ; and I sat and watched Timothy, hungrily waiting for the first signs of returning somnolence, like a vulture waiting the approach of death to a wounded man. But Timothy was incorrigibly wide awake, as he reclined there, gazing with unfathomable eyes at the distant landscape. Presently the sound of cantering hoofs told that the others were returning, and I left the teepee to wait impatiently for nightfall.

Never, it seemed to me, did the sun sink so deliberately behind the horizon. When night did come, I thought the good old priest would never go to bed. How late he read ! At last the volume was placed carefully aside. Then the light was extinguished, and I knew that a prolonged interval of prayer would elapse before he went to bed. I drew near, and sat in the doorway, from whence, in the gloom within, I could vaguely distinguish the outline of the dark-robed figure kneeling beneath the crucifix. Sometimes the murmur of his voice reached me, fervent but low, and more than once my heart was stirred deeply as the cadence of my name caught my ear. At length he rose, and was soon lying on his bed of cedar boughs, a rough and unaccommodating couch for so aged and good a head. I approached, and stood by the bunk side, waiting till the regular breathing told me that he slept. Then, with intense if suppressed excitement, I commenced my experiments.

First, I leaned over him, and whispered his name several times in his ear. Next, lightly and reverently, I passed my hand over his face and hair. After two or three such passes a certain irregularity in the breathing told me that his slumber was disturbed.

“Father! Father Francis! It is I, Arthur Sayce, your son, who speaks ! ”

Wearily he rolled his head from side to side ; a faint murmur broke from his lips, and then — he awoke ! The disappointment, when his sudden movement and the change in respiration told me that he had awaked, was intense. But there was nothing for it but to wait till sleep again asserted itself. This did not take many minutes, but to me, in my impatience, every moment of delay was irksome. At length he slept ; but, as he had awaked so easily before, I knew that it would he better to allow him to become more deeply immersed in slumber before recommencing my experiments. So I left the cabin, and sentenced myself to walk twenty times from the door to the Mission and back, before returning.

This time I was move cautious, and touched his face more carefully (for, though without any sense of touch, I could regulate my muscles perfectly) and breathed his name more lightly in his ear. Whenever he moved. I ceased, — waiting breathless with fear lest he should wake ; then I commenced again to touch and whisper to him as soon as the regularity of his breathing was resumed. It was a stealthy and seemed an unholy work, and more than once I started guiltily at the hoot of an owl or the cry of a distant wolf.

“ This,” I thought to myself, “ is how the midnight murderer feels.”

Many a time he murmured indistinctly in his sleep, but it was not till the night was far advanced, after hours of striving in alternate hope and despair, that I caught the sound of my name from his lips.

“ Arthur Sayce ! ” he murmured brokenly. “ He has not returned. My son ! My son! He will not come to me, but I may go to him ! ”

“Yes! Yes! Father, he is here; he has returned ; he has come to you! It is I, father, speaking to you now! ” But he was awake again.

Once more, when he fell asleep, I exiled myself from the cabin, and resumed my old task, increased this time, by sentence of the court, to thirty turns outside. Returning, the same slow work of establishing communication with the slumbering mind commenced. By many repetitions, alternately insisting and desisting, I brought him once more to speak my name. By slow degrees, going again and again over every step of ground, and always fearful that he was on the brink of wakefulness, I told him all the story, —I told him how Tsinshil-zaska had given me a drug ; and at the twentieth repetition of the fact, perhaps, the sleeper gulped, and the muscles of his throat went through the motions of swallowing in his slumbers. I told him of my sickness and of my coma, and in the responsive, uneasy tossings of his head and gripings of his hand I saw that the idea of sickness and pain was with him in his sleep. I told him of my waking and of his coming to my cabin, of the discovery of my powerlessness ; and as I did so, repeating each phrase many times, the name of the medicine man fell from his lips, and in the mutterings that followed the word “ unrepentant” caught my ear.

The excitement of the narration and of the eager waiting for signs that he understood was intense. Merely as a psychical experiment, the operation was keenly fascinating ; but added to that was the fact that, as I trusted, my life itself hung dependent on the experiment’s success.

Again he awoke, and again, with unflagging eagerness, I went through all the story, repeating and again repeating every detail of it. The final fact that I had to force upon his mind was that Tsin-shil-zaska, and he alone, as far as I knew, had possession of the secret, and from him, if from anybody, must the method of counteracting or reversing the operation of the drug be learned. How often and in how many forms I repeated that fact I do not know. But the gray light of morning came, and found me still struggling with him. Then I left him, that he might have some space of peaceful slumber, and went out into the open air to wait for day as impatiently as I had waited for the preceding night.

At the first movement inside the cabin, I returned. Father Francis was just rising. I was beside him as he stepped from his bunk, crossed the floor, and fell on his knees before the crucifix. His first sentences of prayer were audible words of thanksgiving, — “ In that Thou, O Lord, hast esteemed my service worthy of continuance for yet another day of earth,” — and of supplication for the welfare during the day of " Thy servant and those whom Thou hast allotted him to labor with, as well as for all Thy children upon earth.” Then his words became unintelligible even to my strained ears, but it was with eager joy that I caught them rising again: “ Strange visions, O Lord, Thou knowest have come to me in my sleep in this the past night, but I know not whether they were of Thee, and sent as of old when Thou spakest to Thy servants in dreams and symbols, as also not seldom in later times. If in truth Thy laws have been broken, and one of Thy children has had the life which Thou gavest him taken from him contrary to Thy will, and if thou hast appointed me as a minister to rebuke the offender, Thou knowest, () Lord, that Thy servant is waiting to do what Thou dost command.”

Again his voice became almost inaudible. Breathless with eagerness, I endeavored to catch the murmured syllables, but it was useless. How I longed for the power, only for one moment, to tell the father that what he had heard in his sleep was true, to urge him to follow the clue thus given to him ! But it was futile wishing, and, weary and desperate, I turned into the open air again, as the father rose from his knees.

I waited anxiously for the first meeting of the father and the medicine man. It came after the morning prayer, when the sun was a-glitter on the mountain peaks, though the Mission lay yet in shadow. On issuing from the building, the father called Tsin-shil-zaska to him, and with him reëntered the cabin. For some moments both stood silent: the father keeping his eyes fixed on the ground; the Indian, with frowzy hair and blanket muffled round his chin, gazing into vacancy. At length the father raised his eyes and looked at the Indian, while I stood trembling by.

“ Tsin-shil-zaska, my son, I have had strange dreams during the night.”

“ Huh ! ” And there was a whole monograph of skepticism condensed into the monosyllable.

“ Once more I must ask thee : thou knowest naught of him who is lost?”

“ Of the Man - with - the - little - rifle ? Huh ! ” This time in the negative and with one slow shake of his head.

“ In my dreams, I thought thou knewest of the manner of his death ; nay, that thou hadst the power to produce him again.”

“ Tsin - shil - zaska has no power to bring the dead to life. The good father is a greater medicine man than he.”

“When didst thou last see him ? ”

“ The good father was with the Manwith-the-little-rifle last before he went away. Tsin-shil-zaska might ask the good father whether he knows anything of him.”

“My son,” said Father Francis, “ thou knowest that I have never unjustly accused any one, — that I have quarreled with none and done no man wrong. Thou knowest that I would rather love thee than hate, and if thou canst show me that my suspicions are unjust it will be gladness and joy to me.”

The Indian’s face remained utterly without expression during this appeal.

“ The good father has no cause for his suspicions. Tsin-shil-zaska has done no wrong.”

Again there was silence. The father looked anxiously at him for some seconds ; then, —

“ I trust it is so, my son. If thou hast done any wrong, be sure that the Lord will convict and punish thee.”

With that he moved away to the farther end of the cabin. Then for the first time a gleam of expression came into the Indian’s eyes, — only one flash, but a flash of such malignity and hatred as I have never seen in human eyes before or since. A moment later he shuffled out of the cabin.

That day formed another epoch in my period of exile from the world. Then arose the fourth terror, which held a longer sway than any of its predecessors. This was the terror of murder.

After the events of the preceding night, the intense strain and mental agonies of those hours of darkness, I was possessed with a strange restlessness all day. It was a curious feeling, — feverishness, perhaps, if a man without blood could be obnoxious to fever; intense nervousness, if nervousness could attach to a being that is nerveless.

The Indians had shambled off afoot in the morning, and the place was lonely even to me, accustomed as I was now to the supreme isolation of my condition. About midday, I, for the first time since the drinking of the drug, left the Mission, and wandered aimlessly towards the river. The stream was running brimful, and muddy with the melted snow from the mountains. Most unlike a trout stream it looked, as it hurried past in thick eddies and rapids, flecked with bubbles. Reaching the bank, I turned down stream, following the winding water through patches of woodland, and beds of purple iris, and round smooth lawns of grass. Arriving at one unusually dense patch of woodland and brush, it became necessary to leave the stream, and skirt the edges of the thicket. When I was half-way round, the sound of voices from the other side of the intervening brush caught my ear. These, as I approached, resolved themselves into the rhythmic cadence of an Indian chant,—the rising and falling of that simple song without words which is common to all the Northwestern Indians : “Hi-yi-yi-yi-ya-ha-ha-ha-hi-yi ! ” and so on in endless strophes of " Hi-yiyi ! ” and antistrophes of “ Ha-ya-ya! ” On rounding the end of the woodland, I came upon the party from which the song proceeded, — my friend and enemy, Tsin-shil-zaska, and his two satellites. Just now all three were revolving in a common orbit round the same centre. From a distance I could not see what that centre was; but on approaching I found it to be a simple stake, some four feet high, driven into the ground, on the top of which a dead scarlet-crested woodpecker was impaled. Whether the woodpecker was an accidental victim, or whether the old bird of augury still has for the red man of the Northwest any supernatural properties, I do not know. However, there Picus lay, or hung, evidently the central figure in a solemn ceremonial.

It was a dance which was new to me, and I have a suspicion that it was invented for the occasion by Tsin-shilzaska. Their blankets were thrown aside, and all were, except for a waistcloth, from the sides of which depended the straps by which the leggings, which reached a little above the knees, were supported, entirely naked. They were revolving in a circle, some ten feet in diameter, each equidistant from the other, of which the impaled woodpecker was the centre. Their attitudes and gestures were the same, and those which are adopted by, I believe, all Indians in their solemn dances : the knees slightly bent; the bronze body leaned a little forward, as if in eager, stealthy march upon some enemy ; the head erect, and turning stiffly and in jerks from side to side ; the left hand pressed upon the groin ; the right upraised, as if about to stab with the large knife which each held in his fingers. “ Hi-yi-yi-yi ! Hiya-a-a ! Ya-ha-ha-ha! ” and so on, and so on, — da capo and ad libitum. Each sang without reference to the time of the others, and moved his feet, raising them at each step very high, and planting them flat and firmly, only to the cadence of his own voice. At intervals, Tsin-shil-zaska, who was evidently coryphæus, would, in addition to his regular revolution in the common orbit, make a quick secondary revolution on his own axis, — turning round on his heels as if suspecting some enemy behind, and quickly resuming his place in the circle, to recommence hi-yi-ing with renewed vigor.

For fully a quarter of an hour I watched them treading their weary round ; then Tsin-shil-zaska quickened his step. The others followed suit. Quicker and quicker they revolved, till all were fairly on the run. Meanwhile their voices were rising, and the chant grew faster and wilder, till at length it culminated in that strange yelping noise into which all Indian chantings resolve themselves in the crisis of a dance. They brandished their right arms around their heads. The heads themselves turned rapidly from side to side. Keenest excitement was on every face. The yelpings rose higher and higher yet; faster and more furious grew the dance, till suddenly, with one demoniacal howl in unison, all three sprang on the poor woodpecker with uplifted knives. A sudden stab from Tsin-shil-zaska’s hand loosened the bird from the stake, and it dropped to the ground. In an instant all were on their knees beside it, and in rapid succession the three knives were plunging into the mangled body, — so rapid that it seemed a wonder that none stabbed a comrade by mistake. For half a minute, perhaps, they were on their knees, each stabbing as fast as his muscles would work, and throwing into every stroke the strength of a deaththrust.

It was unutterably horrible and savage to watch. I felt my own being thrill with excitement, and the muscles of my hands twitched responsively as the Indians stabbed. When they rose from the ground, a few small shreds of bloody flesh and a litter of feathers — red and green and gray — were all that remained of the sacred bird.

It was a very Dance of Death. Whether or not anything as to the meaning of what I had witnessed had yet formed itself in my mind, I cannot say. I knew that it made me shudder; that it was horrid, — the condensed expression of all the bloodthirstiness of savage nature ; and, vaguely, that it had somehow a terrible significance. It was not long before I knew what that significance was.

After a moment’s rest, Tsin-shil-zaska proceeded to gather up the feathers and fragments of flesh in his hands. Advancing to the edge of the swollen river, which was not ten paces away, he scattered them over the water, to be swirled away into eddies as soon as they touched the stream. This action he accompanied with the low chanting of what I knew must be a curse. Most of it was unintelligible to me, being in his native tongue, but twice the words “ good father ” caught my ear, and made me shudder. Ceasing, he turned round, took half a pace towards the Mission, and stood, the knife clasped in his right hand at the level of the thigh, the left foot forward as if about to make a spring, and every muscle in his body strained and rigid. The other two at once caught the spirit of the pose, and, similarly grasping their knives, threw themselves into the same attitude, facing in the same direction. A yell broke from Tsin-shil-zaska’s lips. He raised his knife as if to strike, and all three started to run abreast towards the Mission. At first I thought they were really about to “run amuck” to the father’s cabin, and murder him in their present frenzy. But after some ten paces they halted, brandished their knives, with a ferocity that was indescribable, in the air, in the direction of the invisible buildings, gave one yell, and suddenly relapsed into perfect Indian apathy.

It was awful to see the completeness with which they controlled themselves. A moment before, fierce as wolves savage with the lust of blood; and now, with their bronze skins still flashing in the sun from the perspiration which the excitement and exercise had forced from their pores, unconcerned and listless as if after a day of idleness.

I did not wait by the river, but started at once for the Mission. There was no longer the shadow of a doubt in my mind as to the significance of what I had witnessed. The ferocity of the final feint in the direction of the Mission could not be misunderstood, even if the repetition of the father’s name in Tsinshil-zaska’s curse had not already given the cue. That a murder, and a murder of the most revolting kind, was about to be committed I knew, without any argument or the necessity of putting my knowledge into words. The medicine man was, of course, the instigator of the horrible conspiracy, with no possible motive for his crime but malice and jealousy, with perhaps a touch of fear, awakened by the father’s reference to his vision, lest his disposition of myself should be discovered. The dance, with its bloody symbolism, — whether improvised or of traditional observance on such occasions, I could not guess, — was undoubtedly intended to give to the crime some semblance of religious sacrifice in the minds of the other two. All this I realized without formulating my apprehensions into words, as I ran, in dazed, staggering haste, back to the Mission.

Arrived at the father’s cabin, I found him seated on a stool, lost in meditation, with his eyes fixed upon the ground, his hands folded in his lap. I threw myself kneeling at his feet, rested my elbows on his knees, and gazed in an agony of supplication and despair into his eyes. If I could but tell him! If by the lightest sign I could only make known my presence to him, then it might be that in some way I could put him on his guard ! If it were only night-time, when I could speak to him in his sleep ! But I thought with terror that before another night came it might be too late, and I would only be able, having witnessed his murder, to implore, in the perhaps more perfect communication of invisible with invisible spirit, his forgiveness. Was it quite impossible to establish a means of correspondence with his waking mind ? All my life I have had the supremest contempt for what I have considered the charlatanry of spiritualism, and mind-reading, and “ Christian science ; ” but in those moments of agony, how I wished that I had given even the smallest study to the methods which I had been so quick to despise !

Kneeling before him, I gazed with all my soul into the great grave eyes which, at a distance of scarcely a foot, looked through mine, and struggled to project some impulse of my mind into his. If ever man was enabled to influence and inform the mind of another, surely I, I thought, in the intensity of my endeavor, can influence him. Striving my utmost, contracting my brows to concentrate my gaze the more perfectly, drawing my eyes closer and closer to his, I watched with tingling anxiety every light and shade that flitted across his face. Sometimes serene in quiet meditation, then ruffling under the passing shadow of troubled thought, then again placid and smooth as if sunlit with the light of piety, I watched his eyes, as one may watch the surface of the lake on a day of fickle cloud and sunshine. More earnestly still I attempted to compress my whole being — heart and thought — into my gaze, and to force my mind into communion with his, trying to cut my attention from wandering even so far as to recognize the changes of expression on his sad, sweet face.

Whether or not I influenced him, certainly he was influencing me. I felt myself drawn more near and yet more near to him ; my very life seemed to merge and lose itself in the soft light of his eyes ; a sense of dependence came over me, — of oblivion. I ceased to realize my own corporeal individuality, and felt drawn by those eyes into a clearer, purer atmosphere than I was used to move in. My mind was wrapped, engulfed, in his. A sense of quiet and of holy awe to which I was a stranger came over me. I knew that his temper was absorbing mine, or rather infusing itself into me. With an effort I strove to undazzle my sense, and with my heart as much as with my lips I murmured, “ Murder ! ” And it seemed to me as if it were he who murmured it, not I, — or at least that our two beings murmured it as one.

Suddenly his brow contracted. His eye darkened, as if some thunder-cloud obscured the light. His lips moved. The charm was broken, and my mind freed itself from his. Hastily he rose and paced to the door; then returned, and gazing for a moment, with clasped hands, at the crucifix where it hung against the rough log wall, in the further shadow of the little cabin, dropped on his knees beneath it in prayer.

“ O Lord ! I know not whether these presentiments, so often recurring, are sent of Thee, or whether they are but the unworthy forebodings of a fearful heart. Thy will be done, O Lord ! In the days past, Thine arm has upheld me in the presence of death, when the knives were already lifted against me, and Thy goodness has softened the savage hearts. Lord, Thou knowest that Thy servant awaits Thy bidding, and that if it be Thy pleasure that I should now die by the hand of violence I am willing to suffer. But I pray Thee, O Lord, that this act be not laid to the charge of him who does it. Of Thy infinite mercy, I beseech Thee to pardon him ” —

And here his voice became inaudible. I had influenced him ! At least I had been able, however dimly, to warn him of the danger which impended ; but I knew, and sickened at the knowledge, that he would take no steps to avoid what was coming, but would meet it resignedly as a manifestation of His will.

The rest of that day was terrible to me, as one long waking nightmare. But at last the time for the evening service arrived. The father, who had been on his knees in prayer since mid-afternoon, entered the Mission building. The Indians came up the hill, with their long shadows in front, and followed him into the sacred edifice. Then they sat silent, expressionless, indifferent, while the man whom they were about to murder prayed for them. Perhaps they did not hear him, or surely his gentle words must have softened their hearts. His prayers were short. Doubtless he felt the mockery of it all. His words were chiefly a supplication in behalf of the three visible members of his congregation ; a hope that they might be blessed and purified, and made to live in the way of peace and gentleness, forgetting more and more the untaught manners of their fathers, and leading with every day a life of greater humanity and mercy. They submitted passively to be prayed for, never changing countenance, and, when he ceased, rose and shuffled down the aisle, shutting the sunlight out of the door as they stepped into the open air. The father remained, as usual, a few minutes on his knees, and then passed out with bowed head. The Indians were waiting outside for his customary evening greeting, which was given with greater earnestness than usual, and which they acknowledged doggedly, and with a brief, ungracioussounding murmur of response. Their faces did not change, — the same stolid, expressionless features, and the eyes fixed on the further dusk of the evening.

It was all, to me, inexpressibly pathetic and very terrible.

The father lingered in his cabin doorway for one last look at the now halfhidden sun, and I thought that I saw ; “ in his eyes the foreknowledge of death.”Very deep and sad the eyes were, while the whole cabin, his face, his very robe, and the hillside beyond were flushed with rose-color. Turning, he went into the cabin. The Indians shuffled off, their three figures black and large against the sky.

The father was soon again upon his knees, and I sat crushed and weary in the doorway. The last tinge of rose almost faded from the western sky. The song of the meadow-lark and the osprey’s shrill scream ceased, and the night - hawks wheeled overhead. The mist hanging over the river shut out all the landscape. Once the father rose, and paced up and down his cabin; and when he stopped in the doorway I rose, and laid my hands on his shoulders, endeavoring to bring my mind once more into communication with his, to piece out the imperfect warning of the afternoon. But it was useless. His eyes were looking up to heaven, “filled with the sacred imagination of things which are not,” and I knew that his mind was on a plane to which I could not climb, — holy and unapproachable in its serenity. It awed me, and I soon desisted. As I sat down again a strange dizziness came over me, causing sudden hope to thrill through me. But it passed, though I sat with head thrown back and muscles relaxed, inviting it to return.

Darkness fell. The father prayed on. Hours passed, — nine o’clock — ten — eleven. My strained ears had as yet heard no sound from the direction of the teepee. At last the father rose, and lit a small remnant of candle, which was placed on a shelf just below the crucifix, so that that only caught any light, the kneeling figure below and the bunk being in complete darkness. Looking out into the night, I gave a sudden start. Something moved there in the further, faint candlelight. Yes, there were figures approaching, — one — two — three; and I knew that the supreme hour had come.

But once more the dizziness was on me. This time the fit did not pass away so quickly; and what followed is all indistinct in my memory. I can remember Tsin-shil-zaska entering the cabin. I rose, and followed him in. I saw the father standing and facing the Indian. Then sinking on my knees behind and almost touching the latter, as he stood beside the table, I swooned.

When I recovered consciousness, it was to suffer again all the internal rackings, the nausea, and the dizziness that had beset me after the drinking of the drug. Through them I was dimly conscious of a certain hopefulness, — hope that this second agony might mean that the potion had exhausted itself. But hope was soon blotted out again by physical pain.

Brokenly, as if from a distance, voices reached me. A movement in the blanket just before my face suddenly attracted my attention. The Indian’s right arm had dropped stealthily down, and the long blade of the knife that I had seen twice before protruded from under the folds to within a few inches of my cheek. Again the fit came over me, and I sank lower to the ground, resting with my knuckles on the sawdust floor; and as the paroxysm passed, a new fact came dimly to me : I became aware that I could feel a sensation of weight upon my hands, — a sensation to which I had long been a stranger.

Hope ? Oh, I was hopeful in a vague, weary way. Everything was strange and unreal. I knew that I was becoming myself again ; that my flesh gained substance once more. I knew that my horrid trance was ending ; but I knew also that murder was about to be committed before me, and above all was the sense of intense sickness and great physical pain. I knew what was going on, — knew it acutely ; but I did not seem to care.

The Indian fumbled the handle of the knife in his fingers; and I heard his voice : —

“ Tsin-shil-zaska has not the power to bring the dead to life, but he can make the living dead.”

The crisis had arrived. I saw the fingers moving nervously on the knife handle, as if preparing for the final grip. A few seconds more and all would be too late. Clearly, as in a burst of light, it all came to me. Had I strength? I knew not, but with a sudden spring I had clutched the murderer’s hand in both of mine. The left grasped his wrist. The right wrenched the knife from his unsuspecting fingers. I jumped to my feet. He turned quickly to confront me. The candle, long apparently dead, shot, up into sudden brilliancy, and a gleam of terror came into his eyes, as he saw who it was that faced him. In a quick movement of fear he raised his left arm, and with it the blanket from his breast, and I drove the knife with all my strength into his heart.

We fell together to the ground. Neither had uttered a sound. Then, as I lay, came the nausea again, — deathly retching ; everything swam around me ; my head seemed bursting ; then blackness, and once more I was unconscious.

When I awoke it was afternoon, as was evident from the sunlight which shone aslant in at the open door, throwing a long, pointed patch of yellow across the floor. I was in the father’s cabin, lying on the bunk, with a blanket thrown over me. I knew at once that I was again as other men are. Father Francis kneeled by my side.

“Father! ”

“ My son ! ”

“ Can you see me ? ”

“ Assuredly, my son ! ”

With a long sigh of relief, I turned on my side, and gazed out of the open door at the sunlit landscape, my whole being filled with a sense of dreamy pleasure, such as one feels between sleep and waking, — an inexpressible contentment. There was no alloy whatever in the pure enjoyment of the sensation of new-found life.

And now for my object in writing this. It is in no wise to be regarded as a confession of crime ; though indeed, if at any time, through the information of any of the other Indians, accusation should be made against Father Francis of the murder of the medicine man, herein lies his exculpation. Nor is it simply written to catch the public ear by the narration of experiences which I believe to be unprecedented. It is chiefly for the benefit of my brothers of the medical profession, many hundreds of whom will know my name. To them I speak.

Somewhere on these western slopes of the Bitter Roots, not far from the Cœur d’Alène River, and so near to the Mission that the Indian could procure it within a day’s journey, is to be found a drug of properties entirely new to science. A physician will not need to be told that the action of the potion was not that of any ordinary acid or alkali. Its operation on me was something more than one of mere chemical dissolution, — no simple resolving of matter into its elements. With some subtler action than chemist has ever been called upon to analyze, — by means of properties the very genus of which cannot be guessed at, — it works upon the vital forces themselves. It is the fable of Gyges’ ring translated into the language of prescriptions: “the gift of fernseed ” in the hands of every qualified pharmacist in the United States ! And during the two months in which I have been searching for the herb with the pungent, well-remembered smell, there is not a fern on the mountain side that I have not examined and experimented with again and again, with some vague, halfsuperstitious hope that the old myth may somehow help me to the truth.

I have visited the reservation, and cross-questioned the only medicine man now holding any authority, but am convinced that he knows nothing of the secret. Perhaps, had I considered that I was destroying the only clue within my reach, I might have stayed my hand from the death-thrust. But I doubt it. Terror and hatred were strong within me.

I do not purpose leaving this section until the secret is in my hands. Once only have I had any hint of the presence of the plant that I am seeking. It was in a patch of dense forest that clothes a steep hill slope, where it rises abruptly from the river’s edge. I was forcing my way through the tangled brush, when suddenly there was a movement a few feet ahead, and a great she cinnamon bear rose in the dim light from behind a rotting log, where she had been lying with her pair of cubs. I knew that I should have to fight, and at once brought my Winchester to my shoulder. The brute scrambled over the log towards me, and as she rose on her haunches on the nearer side, scarcely fifteen feet away, I fired. She dropped, but rose again and charged. The flash from the muzzle must almost have scorched her face, as my second bullet crashed through her skull. So close to me was she that, in falling, one of her fore-paws struck me just above the ankle, and sent me rolling backwards into the brush. In that moment when I was falling the well-remembered scent came clearly to my nostrils. Forgetting all about the cubs, I began plucking the leaves and crushing the stems of every plant around; snapping twigs from the branches and peeling the bark from the trees, testing every substance with my nose. For a time I even thought that perhaps I was mistaken, and the drug was not an herb at all, but was expressed from some portion of the bear. A series of experiments with the carcass, however, have convinced me that there was no truth in that, and I am to-day as far from the discovery as ever.

But I will not abandon my hope. The chances of mishap in the life that I am leading are many, and it is possible that

I may never live to achieve the great triumph. But I am hopeful, and do not believe that the object of my search can much longer evade me. If anything should happen to me, however, I implore some brother physician who has known me and can rely on what I say, by the love that he bears to his profession, to take up the task that I leave uncompleted. There is a reward worth striving for, worth risking all for. No man who has gone through the experiences that I have known here would relinquish the quest in life.

Harry Perry Robinson.