“I was not afraid. I felt very big and strong, and I cried back to the thunder beings as loud as I could, ‘_hey-a-hey, hey-a-hey_,’ and they answered. Then the lightning and the voices were all about me, so that I could not hear the cries I sent forth, and the rain was a roaring between thunders. I stood there, holding my pipe high in both hands, but not a drop of rain touched me. And when the swift storm had past and the stars were bright again, I could hear the giant voices cheering far away. “I knew my praying had been heard and I would see. The power was mighty in me as I prayed around the hoop and back to the most sacred place at the center. “I was standing in the hole with my face and hands and pipe raised to the Great Mysterious One, and I was crying hard while I prayed, but I was happy and my heart sang. I was saying, ‘All over the world the faces of living ones are alike.’ But all at once I was not saying; I was seeing! “I was standing on the highest hill in the center of the world. There was no sun, but so clear was the light that what was far was near. The circle of the world was a great hoop with the two roads crossing where I stood, the black one and the red. And all around the hoop more peoples than I could count were sitting together in a sacred manner. The smokes of all the peoples’ little fires stood tall and straight and still around the circle; and by the murmur of the voices of the peoples, they were happy. And while I looked and wondered, there was a tree that sprang at my feet from where the two roads crossed. It grew so fast that, while I watched, it reached the sky and spread, filling the heavens with blooms and singing leaves. “Then I felt dizzy, and all at once I was sitting in the hole with my head on the grassy edge of it. When I looked about me, the circle of the world was empty and the sun was high above. While I sat there looking around me at the empty world, I felt homesick for what I had seen without my eyes, and there was an aching in my breast. “Afterwhile I knew I was very hungry and thirsty. So I filled myself with water from the skin; and when I looked around me again, far off down a valley I could see the friends returning with the horse.” The old man fell into one of his prolonged silences which I finally broke with a question: “And the _wakon_? What did he say when you told him?”