"Quick!" Hopping-Bear, the old medicine-man, came, a dreadful figure in eagle's plumes and bear-skins.

To affect the imagination of the people when he was going to visit the sick, he had been accustomed to walk upon his two hands and one foot, with the other foot moving up and down in the air.

He believed that sickness was caused by obsession, or the influence of some evil spirit, and he endeavored, by howlings, jumpings, and rattling of snake-skins, to drive this imaginary spirit away.

But he did not begin his incantations here; he looked upon Benjamin with staring eyes, and cried out: "It is the plague!" The old chief of the Cascades lifted his helpless face to the sky.
"The stars are gone out!" he said.

"I care for nothing more." The boy at times was convulsed, then lay for a time unconscious after the convulsions, then consciousness would return.