saw the teeth of one of them appear through
the leather side of his tent. He could only
scare them away by firing at them in the darkness;
but they returned to the attack in a few
hours; and they left him no chance of sleep till
the broad daylight drove them back to their lairs.

He was just strong enough on the ninth day
to make the ninth notch in the pole of the tent.
On the tenth he was powerless. His courage
gave way; and he despaired, for the first time,
of rescue. He had a medicine-chest with him,
which he had already used, containing a small
bottle of laudanum and a case of quinine. Without
forming any distinct resolution, without well
knowing what he did, he put the laudanum
bottle to his lips and almost emptied it. A deep
swoon followed the draught: he remembered
taking it, and remembered nothing more.

When he came to himself again it was pitch
dark, and his tent poles were rocking in a gale
of wind. Thirst, and, in a lesser degree,
hunger, were his awakening sensations. He
satisfied the first with half-melted snow, and the
second with raw buffalo-meat. When his fire
(which had dwindled to a few glimmering
sparks) was relighted, he roasted the meat; and
recklessly devoured three days' rations at a meal.
By the morning he was so much better (partly
through the rest which the laudanum had given
to his mind, partly through the sustenance
which the excess of food had afforded to his
body) that the preservation of his life became
once more a matter of some interest to him. He
tottered out, leaning on his rifle, to get a little
exercise. In a few days he contrived to walk as
far as the top of a low hill, from which he could
look forth, all round, over the lonesome prospect.

By this time his provisions were at an end,
and the last faint hope of rescue from the
Mission had died out of his mind. It was a question,
now, whether the man should devour the
wolves, or the wolves the man. The man had
his rifle, his ammunition, and his steady resolution
to fight it out with solitude, cold, and
starvation, to the very last and the wolves
dropped under his bullets, and fed him with
their dry, sinewy flesh. He took the best part
of the meat only, and left the rest. Every
morning the carcase abandoned over night was
missing. The wolves that were living devoured
to the last morsel the wolves that were dead.

He grew accustomed to his wretched and
revolting food, and to every other hardship of his
forlorn situation—except the solitude of it. The
unutterable oppression of his own loneliness
hung upon his mind, a heavier and heavier
weight with each succeeding day. A savage
shyness at the idea of meeting with any living
human creatures began to take possession of
him. There were moments when he underwent
the most fearful of all mortal trials—the
conscious struggle to keep the control of his own
senses. At such times, he sang, and whistled,
and extended his walks to the utmost limits
that his strength would allow; and so, by main
force, as it were, held his own tottering reason
still in its place.

Thus, the woful time—the dreary, lonely,
hopeless hours—wore on till he had cut his
sixteenth notch in the tent-pole. This was a
memorable day in the history of the Crusoe of the
snowy desert.

He had walked out to the top of the little
hill to watch the sun's way downward in the
wintry western heaven, and he was wearily looking
about him, as usual, when he saw two human
figures, specks as yet in the distance, approaching
from the far north. The warning of the Delaware
Indian came back to his memory, and
reminded him that those two men were approaching
from the district of the murderous Pawnees.

A moment's consideration decided him to await
the coming of these strangers in a place of
ambush which commanded a view of his tent. If
they were Pawnees, he knew that the time had
come when they or he must die.

He went back to the tent, armed himself with
as many weapons as he could carry, took the
percussion-caps off the rest, and hid them under his
bed. Then he put wood on the fire, so as to let the
smoke rise freely through the opening at the top
of the tent, and thereby strengthen any suspicion
in the minds of strangers that a living man was
inside it; and he next fastened the second opening,
which served for door, tying it on the inner
side, as if he had shut himself up for the night.
This done, he withdrew to the frozen river of
Sandy Hill Creek, about a hundred and fifty
paces off, walking backwards so as to make his
footmarks in the snow appear to be leading to
the tent, instead of away from it. Arrived on
the ice, off which the high winds had drifted the
snow up on the banks, he took off his shoes for
fear the nails in them might betray him by
scratches on the smoothly-frozen surface, and
then followed the stream over the ice, till he
reached the winding which brought its course
nearest to his tent. Here he climbed up the
bank, between two snow-drifts, and hid himself
among some withered bushes, where the twigs
and stalks gave him a sight of the tent, and just
room enough, besides, for the use of his weapons.

In this situation he watched and listened.
Although the frost was so intense that his breath
froze on his beard, and his left hand felt glued to
the barrel of his levelled rifle, the fever of
expectation in his mind prevented his feeling the cold.
He watched, for what seemed to be an interminable
time; and, at last, the heads of the two men
rose in sight over the brow of a neighbouring
hill. Their figures followed in another minute.
All doubts were ended now—the last day in this
world had dawned for him or for them—the men
were Pawnees.

After holding counsel together on the hill, the
savages threw back their buffalo skins, drew
their full quivers before them, and strung their
bows. They then separated. One walked to
the top of the hill from which the deserted
traveller had first caught sight of them, to trace
the direction of his footsteps: the other
examined the track between the water and the tent.
Both appeared to be satisfied with their investigations;
both met again before the tent, and