Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IX. Oowikapun confesses his complete failure to find peace for his troubled spirit in Nature.—Mookoomis' dreadful advice.—To try the trial of torture.—Hock-e-a-yum.—The journey to the Far West.—The terrible ordeal.—The agony and sufferings, all in vain.—No voice of comfort, no peace, no pardon.—Return home.—Society shunned.—A sudden resolve.—Determined to go and see Aslumastao, the brave girl who knew something of the right way.—Something about her.—Free as a prairie breeze. CHAPTER IX. SHORTLY after his return to the village Oowikapun found his way to the tent of Mookoomis, and candidly told him of his complete failure to find comfort or peace of mind in communion with nature. He said he had faithfully carried out his directions, hut that everything that he had hoped would have in it help or satisfaction seemed to have had just the reverse. Mookoomis listened intently to all he had to say; then, perhaps for the first time in his life, freely admitted his own dissatisfaction and uncertainty of belief in their Indian way. But he was an obstinate, wicked old man, and determined, if possible, to keep Oowikapun walking, as he again said, " as our forefathers walked." So he urged him to make the great trial of fasting and personal torture, and see if in the delirium of physical agonies the voice of comfort for which he was longing would not come to him. For a long time the young man hesitated to undertake this terrible ordeal. It is called by the western Indians the Hock- e-a-yum, and is a ceremony so severe and dreadful that many an Indian has never recovered from its agonies. Great indeed must be the wretched disquietude that will cause human beings, who naturally shrink from pain, to endure what thousands voluntarily submit to if only they can get peace to the...