Pierre and His People, [Tales of the Far North].

Excerpt: ... these-my mother; and she died of a wound they gave her at the Tete Blanche Hill. Well, for that you die now, Yellow Arm, if this gun has a bullet cold enough. A bullet pinged through the sharp air, as the Indians swarmed towards the gate, and Yellow Arm, the chief, fell. The besiegers paused; and then, as if at the command of the fallen man, they drew back, bearing him to the camp, where they sat down and mourned. Pierre watched them for a time; and, seeing that they made no further move, retired into the store, where the Idiot muttered and was happy after his kind. Grah got pipe-blow away-blow away to Annie-pretty soon. Yes, Grah, there's chance enough that you'll blow away to Annie pretty soon, remarked the other. Grah have white eagles-fly, fly on the wind-oh, oh, bubble, bubble! and he sent the filmy globes floating from the pipe that a camp of river- drivers had given the half-breed winters before. Pierre stood and looked at the wandering eyes, behind which were the torturings of an immense and confused intelligence; a life that fell deformed before the weight of too much brain, so that all tottered from the womb into the gutters of foolishness, and the tongue mumbled of chaos when it should have told marvellous things. And the half-breed, the thought of this coming upon him, said: Well, I think the matters of hell have fallen across the things of heaven, and there is storm. If for one moment he could think clear, it would be great. He bethought him of a certain chant, taught him by a medicine man in childhood, which, sung to the waving of a torch in a place of darkness, caused evil spirits to pass from those possessed, and good spirits to reign in their stead. And he raised the Idiot to his feet, and brought him, maundering, to a room where no light was. He kneeled before him with a lighted torch of bear's fat and the tendons of the deer, and waving it gently to and fro, sang the ancient rune, until the eye of the Idiot, ...