understand. There were no windows in the cabin, the door was shut,
and it was as dark as Egypt. A fierce contest seemed to be going on.
There were deep groanings and hard breathings; and the snapping of
teeth appeared almost constant. For a moment the noise would subside,
then again the struggles woud be renewed accompanied as before
with groaning, deep sighing, and grinding of teeth.

The captain's bed-clothes consisted of a couple of blankets and a
buffalo-robe, and as the terrible struggles continued he raised
himself up in the bed, and threw the robe around him for protection,
his rifle having been left in the cabin where his host slept, while
his knife was attached to his coat, which he had hung on the corner
post of the other bedstead from which the horrid struggles emanated.
In an instant the robe was pulled off, and he was left uncovered and
unprotected; in another moment a violent snatch carried away the
blanket upon which he was sitting, and he was nearly tumbled off the
bed with it. As the next thing might be a blow in the dark, he felt
that it was high time to shift his quarters; so he made a desperate
leap from the bed, and alighted on the opposite side of the room,
calling for his host, who immediately came to his relief by opening
the door. Williams then told him that the devil--or something
as bad, he believed--was in the room, and he wanted a light.
The accommodating trapper hurried away, and in a moment was back
with a candle, the light of which soon revealed the awful mystery.
It was an Indian, who at the time was struggling in convulsions,
which he was subject to. He was a superannuated chief, a relative of
the wife of the hospitable trapper, and generally made his home there.
Absent when Captain Williams arrived, he came into the room at a
very late hour, and went to the bed he usually occupied. No one
on the claim knew of his being there until he was discovered,