A wolf howl and skunk gnawing made for an eerie solitary night

Evidence

Something howledEvans said it was a wolfand owls apparently innumerable hooted incessantly. The pole-star, exactly opposite my cabin door, burned like a lamp. The frost was sharp. Evans opened the door, lighted a candle, and left me, and I was soon in my hay bed. I was frightenedthat is, afraid of being frightened, it was so eeriebut sleep soon got the better of my fears. I was awoke by a heavy breathing, a noise something like sawing under the floor, and a pushing and upheaving, all very loud. My candle was all burned, and, in truth, I dared not stir. The noise went on for an hour fully, when, just as I thought the floor had been made sufficiently thin for all purposes of ingress, the sounds abruptly ceased, and I fell asleep again. My hair was not, as it ought to have been, white in the morning! — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 295

Categorization

• XREF: Her night of ‘afraid of being frightened’ prefigures the same semi-ironic fear of wild things from earlier chapters in this book.