Among them was a beautiful girl, twenty years of age. A young man
in the band wished her to become his wife, but she flatly refused him.
Perhaps she did it in such a way as to wound his pride; certainly she
roused all that was savage in him, and he gave up all his mind to
revenge. He was skilled in medicine, or in magic, so he went into the
woods and gathered an herb which makes people insensible. Then stealing
into the lodge when all were asleep, he held it to the girl's face,
until she had inhaled the odor and could not be easily awakened. Going
out he made a ball of snow, and returning placed it in the hollow of
her neck, in front, just below the throat. Then he retired without
being discovered. So she could not awake, while the chill went to her
heart. [Footnote: The Eskimo Shamans and the Indian _boo-oin_ are
familiar with many very ingenious and singular ways of producing
prolonged illness and death. There is one known to a very few old
gypsies, of gradually inducing insanity and death, which I have never
seen noted in any work on toxicology. In a work which I lately read, it
was positively denied that there was any such thing as a "lingering
poison"!]
When she awoke she was chilly, shivering, and sick. She refused to eat.
This lasted long, and her parents became alarmed. They inquired what
ailed her. She was ill-tempered; she said that nothing was the matter.
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