and taking hold of the skin of my breast on the right side, he pinched it up and passed his knife through it, and then passed the pin through under the skin, and tied the end to the rope with another strand of sinew.  In the same way he did on the left side of my breast.  Then he told me that all through the day I should walk about this pole, always on the side of the pole toward which the sun was looking, and that I should throw myself back against the rope and should try to tear the pins from my skin.  Then, telling me to pray constantly, to have a strong heart, and not to lose courage, he set out to return to the village.

All through the long summer day I walked about the pole, praying to all the spirits, and crying aloud to the sun and the earth, and all the animals and birds to help me.  Each time when I came to the end of the rope I threw myself back against it, and pulled hard.  The skin of my breast stretched out as wide as your hand, but it would not tear, and at last all my chest grew numb, so that it had no feeling in it; and yet, little by little, as I threw my whole weight against the rope, the strips of skin stretched out longer and longer.  All day long I walked in this way.  The sun blazed down like fire.  I had no food, and did not drink; for so I had been instructed.  Toward night my mouth grew dry, and my neck sore; so that to swallow, or even to open my mouth in prayer hurt me.  It seemed a long time before the sun got overhead and the pole cast but a small shadow; but it seemed that the shadow of the pole grew long in the afternoon much more slowly than it had grown short in the morning.

I was very tired, and my legs were shaking under me, when at last, as the sun hung low over the western hills, I saw someone coming.  It was my friend, Tom Lodge; and when he had come close to me, he spoke to me and said, “My son, have you been faithful all through the day?” I answered him, “Father, I have walked and prayed all day long, but I cannot tear out these pins.”  “You have done well,” he said; and, drawing his knife, he came to me, and taking hold first of one pin and then of the other, he cut off the strips of skin which passed about the pins, and set me free.  He held the strips of skin that he had cut off, toward the sky, and toward the four directions, and prayed, saying:  “Listen! all you spirits of the air, and of the earth, and of the water; and you, O earth! and you, O sun!  This is the sacrifice that my son has made to you.  You have heard how he cries to you for help.  Hear his prayer.”  Then at the foot of the pole he scraped a little hole in the earth and placed the bits of skin there, and covered them up.  Then he gave me to drink from a buffalo paunch waterskin that he had brought.

“Now, my son,” said he, “you shall sleep here this night, and to-morrow morning, as the sun rises, leave this; hill, and everything on it, as it is, and return to the camp.  It may be that during the night something will come to you, to tell you a thing.  If you are spoken to in your sleep, remember carefully what is said to you.”