I paused as she suddenly arose to her feet, and raised her hand in a warning manner. Before I could ask the meaning of this, a shuffling step was heard, and the next minute the Medicine Man made his appearance. He gesticulated angrily toward her, and she passed quietly out of the lodge. I followed her with my eyes, and as she reached the passage way, she turned toward me with a look that told more than words. The Medicine Man evidently suspected what I had been doing; for I could see he was excited, and mumbled continually to himself. He forced a bitter, scalding drink into my mouth, which was soothing in its effects, and in a short time I slept. Now comes a long blank in my memory. After this incident, black night shut around my mind. There is a faint recollection of again seeing Jim and the Medicine Man bending over me, and the sweet pale face of the fair captive, and then again came utter oblivion. CHAPTER X. AN AWFUL AWAKENING. I have now reached a point in my life over which I would fain pass in silence. It is an experience so strange, so like some horrid vision of sleep, so different from what usually falls to the lot of man, that, at this remote day, I cannot look upon it without a recoiling shudder of horror. I have sometimes persuaded myself that it was unreal; but no, it is true, and time can never clothe the memory of it in a different dress than that of unearthly terror. Bleak and bare it stands alone, in my checkered lot, and the silver that now glistens prematurely in my hair, came upon that night. I remember falling into a deep sleep, in which the last form that passed before my eyes was that of the dark Medicine Man; there was a confused murmur of voices, and then all became blank and dark. Gradually the darkness was swept by the glittering folds of a dream--a dream which had little form or theme, but the minutest particulars of which I remember to this day. There were airy, waving figures gliding silently about me without voice, but with every variety of motion. They passed and repassed before my face, frequently pausing and extending their arms over my body, and sometimes standing and intently scanning my countenance. This continued a long time, not a word spoken either by myself or the forms, when suddenly the whole changed. The waving figures darted with the rapidity of lightning among each other, and the quiet radiance became instantly as black as night. In this, I could distinguish the rushing forms growing fainter and fainter, until, at last, all was blackness again. Then came a feeling as though the thick darkness in one volume were gradually crushing me beneath it, and then a strange feeling of being cramped and held forcibly still. Then came a long, deep, indrawn breath, and I awoke.