164 In the United States vi 



followed it alone. The visions soon vanished and 

 his humanity received a harsh reward ; he failed to 

 get his deer, and just as the darkness was falling 

 there came to him the feeling — one of the most 

 awful of all feelings, so men who have actually- 

 experienced it say — that he was, in the expressive 

 slang of the West, ' turned round,' lost, lost in a vast 

 forest of pines and spruces, at night, in a most 

 fearful storm. For a long time he wandered about 

 hoping, but hoping in vain, to find his way to the 

 camp, slipping and stumbling on the wet grass, 

 falling in the pitchy darkness over the rocks, and 

 struggling over the masses of prostrate tree-trunks. 

 Again and again he shouted and fired off his rifle 

 and listened, but the only answers which came to 

 him were the voices of the storm. ' At intervals, 

 when the gale paused for a moment, as if to gather 

 strength, its shrill shrieking subdued to a dismal 

 groan, there was occasionally heard with startling 

 distinctness, through the continuous distant din and 

 clamour of the night, a long, painfully rending 

 cr-r-r-ash, followed by a dull heavy thud, notifying 

 the fall of some monarch of the woods.' . . . 

 ' Strange and indistinct noises would come up from 

 the vale ; rocks became detached and thundered 

 down the far-off crags ; a sudden burst of wind 

 would bear upon the roar of the torrent below with 

 such clearness that it sounded as though it were 

 close at hand. It was an awful night in the 

 strictest sense of the term. The Demon of the 



