She sees him vanish into night,
        She starts from sleep in deep affright,
        For it was not her own true knight.

        Though but in dream Gunhilda failed;
        Though but a fancied ill assailed,
        Though she but fancied fault bewailed.

        Yet thought of day makes dream of night: 
        She is not worthy of the knight,
        The inmost altar burns not bright.

        If loneliness thou canst not bear,
        Cannot the dragon’s venom dare,
        Of the pure meed thou shouldst despair.

        Now sadder that lone maiden sighs,
        Far bitterer tears profane her eyes,
        Crushed in the dust her heart’s flower lies.

[Illustration:  INDIAN ENCAMPMENT]

On the bank of Silver Lake we saw an Indian encampment.  A shower threatened us, but we resolved to try if we could not visit it before it came on.  We crossed a wide field on foot, and found them amid the trees on a shelving bank; just as we reached them the rain began to fall in torrents, with frequent thunder claps, and we had to take refuge in their lodges.  These were very small, being for temporary use, and we crowded the occupants much, among whom were several sick, on the damp ground, or with only a ragged mat between them and it.  But they showed all the gentle courtesy which marks them towards the stranger, who stands in any need; though it was obvious that the visit, which inconvenienced them, could only have been caused by the most impertinent curiosity, they made us as comfortable as their extreme poverty permitted.  They seemed to think we would not like to touch them:  a sick girl in the lodge where I was, persisted in moving so as to give me the dry place; a woman with the sweet melancholy eye of the race, kept off the children and wet dogs from even the hem of my garment.

Without, their fires smouldered, and black kettles, hung over them on sticks, smoked and seethed in the rain.  An old theatrical looking Indian stood with arms folded, looking up to the heavens, from which the rain dashed and the thunder reverberated; his air was French-Roman, that is, more romanesque than Roman.  The Indian ponies, much excited, kept careering through the wood, around the encampment, and now and then halting suddenly, would thrust in their intelligent, though amazed, phizzes, as if to ask their masters when this awful pother would cease, and then, after a moment, rush and trample off again.

At last we got off, well wetted, but with a picturesque scene for memory.  At a house where we stopped to get dry, they told us that this wandering band (of Pottawattamies,) who had returned on a visit, either from homesickness, or need of relief, were extremely destitute.  The women had been there to see if they could barter their head bands with which they club their hair behind into a form not unlike a Grecian knot, for food.  They seemed, indeed, to have neither food, utensils, clothes, nor bedding; nothing but the ground, the sky, and their own strength.  Little wonder if they drove off the game!