Days, weeks passed on, with the same unvarying result. Wawandah was sorely grieved at heart. He began to pine away. His soft and melancholy eye became dull. He had no pleasure in the chase which took him far from the encampment. Every step that he trod in pursuit led him farther from the spot trodden by her, the very soles of whose feet he worshiped, and he could not continue. Thus, when a stray buffalo would cross him, easy to be killed, and offering himself as an unerring mark to his rifle, his passion would so trouble his mind as to unnerve his arm. Then the ball would pass unwounding by, and the half sneers of his companions arise and bring the blush to his cheek; as they bade him tauntingly leave the rifle to be handled by men, and go and amuse himself with the women. In like manner he sought to avoid the war-dance, and the ball playing, and the foot-race, for his mind was too painfully interested to engage unrestrainedly in these amusements, and unless excellence was to be obtained in whatever he undertook, Wawandah cared not to be a competitor. Wawandah was beginning to lose caste not only with the elders of the tribe but with the young men who were jealous of his superiority, and so much was he talked of that the very women knew all that was said by the warriors, and the Sunflower like the rest. It was the first time Wawandah had ever come under the notice of her he so fondly loved, and as he knew the cause, he secretly blessed the fate which had, even under circumstances so humiliating to the pride of a warrior, been the cause of her bestowing even the slightest attention upon him.