One day in one of his most vulpine moods, while trotting among the hills on all fours, stopping now and then to sit upon his haunches and give forth a series of howls in imitation of his namesakes, he had discovered a deserted wolf’s hole in the hillside, of which he immediately made himself the growling possessor. To make this play metempsychosis the more real, he had spirited from the tepee of his father a complete wolf’s hide, clad in which he spent the greater part of the time prowling about among the hills with an intense wolfish hate for all humankind gnawing at his heart. One summer evening Little Wolf, sitting upon the top of the hill, gazed down upon the circle of tepees which was the village of his people. As he looked, the silent vow he had taken, never to go back to his tribe again, but to be a wolf with the wolves, slowly became shapeless, then indistinct, then it vanished altogether. For the smoke, rising slowly from the various fires, told a bewitching tale of supper to his eyes; and the light wind brought to his keen nostrils the scent of boiling kettles, which acted as a sort of footnote to the tale of the smoke, finally clinching the argument of the text! So the little wolf fell from his high resolve as the wolf skin fell from his back, and he forthwith trotted down the hillside, at every step degenerating, as he thought, into just a common _zhinga zhinga_ (baby). Having cautiously approached a fire, Little Wolf sat upon the ground with his knees huddled up to his chin, and watched the deft hands of the women tending the baking of the squaw corn cakes and the yellow _watuh_ (pumpkin) in the embers. The old women, their backs bent with their loads, carried bundles of faggots from a thicket near by and placed them upon the fires, that flared up with a sound like the wind’s, making a small circular day amid the gathering shadows. The air was pleasant with the scent of boiling kettles, some filled with the meat of the _tae_ or the _tachuga_ (bison and antelope); some ebullient with the savoury _zhew munka_, the tea of the prairie. And as Little Wolf sat and looked upon the suggestive scene, a great wave of sympathetic kindness passed through his small body. And especially did the wolfishness of his little heart melt into an indefinite feeling of love for humanity as his eyes followed the form of the maiden Hinnagi as she bustled with her mother about the kettles. Already in his childish mind he was wielding the stone axe with mighty force in some mysterious battle among the hills; and it was all for her. His eyes grew big with the dream he was dreaming. He stared into the fire as he thought the thoughts of ambitious youth.