s offering him
encouragement, and recalling him to his manhood.

He arose to his feet, ashamed that she had read his mind, ashamed that
she had found it necessary to recall him from a lapse into his foolish
weakness which must have seemed to her like cowardice.

But he remembered now that he was a man--a white man--and because he
was a white man, the physical equal and mental superior of any savage
there. Looking into Manikawan's eyes, he made an unspoken vow that she
should never again have cause to chide him.

Dawn was breaking, and in the growing light a half-dozen lodges were
to be seen. At one side and alone stood a deerskin tent of peculiar
form. It was a high tent of exceedingly small circumference, and where
the smoke opening was provided and the poles protruded at the top of
the ordinary wigwam, this was tightly closed. It was the medicine
lodge of the shaman.

Sishetakushin and Mookoomahn had entered one of the lodges immediately
after the tumult caused by their arrival had subsided, and Manikawan
now followed her mother into another lodge. There were no Indians
visible. The moans of the grief-stricken mother, rising above the
voices of men in the lodge which Sishetakushin and Mookoomahn had
entered, were the only sounds.

The air was bitterly cold, but the tragedy enacting around him had for
a time rendered Shad quite insensible to it. When he did finally
realise that, standing inactive, he was numbed and chilled, he still
lingered a little before joining Sishetakushin and Mookoomahn,
dreading to enter the famine-stricken lodges.

At last, however, necessity drove him to do so, and within the lodge
he discovered that a council was in progress. In the centre a fire
burned, and around it the men, solemn and dignified, sat in a circle.
One after another of the Indians spoke in earnest debate. They were
considering what action they should take to preserve their lives, and
Shad, as deeply interested as any, felt aggrieved that he could not
immediately learn the final result of the conference, which came to an
end as the sun cast its first feeble rays over the barren ranges that
marked the southeastern horizon.

When the council closed the Indians filed out of the lodge, and one, a
tall old man, fantastically attired in skins, entered the medicine
lodge alone, carefully closing the entrance after him to exclude any
ray of light.

Immediately drum beats were heard within the tent, accompanied by a
low gro