Sutter's Swamp was an area of perhaps a dozen square miles which lay in the Illinois farming country some scores of miles southwest of Chicago, and a few miles east of the modern little city of Brinton. It was a place of almost incredible desolation, considering its nearness to the busy little town, a great, forest-covered tangle of sluggish streams and stagnant pools. Lying in a perpetual twilight beneath its canopy of vine-choked trees, its surface was a confusion of green water and treacherous quicksands and fallen logs, with here and there a mound of solid ground. To most scientists, no doubt, the place would have seemed unpromising enough for a paleontological survey, since never had prehistoric fossils been found in that section. Morton, however, had merely stated in his quiet way that he intended to carry out an exploration of the place, and had departed for it without further announcement. Arriving in Brinton, quite alone, he had lodged at a hotel and had immediately plunged into his work. Each morning at sunrise he sallied out to the great morass in rough tweed and hip-boots, armed with a long probing-rod of slender steel. To those in Brinton he must have been a perplexing figure, for the great swamp was avoided by them, always, but after a few days they became accustomed to him and took no further note of his comings and goings. And then, a week after his arrival, there burst upon them the sensation of his disappearance. On that day Morton had set forth for the swamp at sunrise as usual, and one Brinton-bound farmer had glimpsed him entering the western edge of the morass. Through that day nothing further was heard of him, but as it was Morton's habit to linger in the swamp until darkness compelled his return, no anxiety was felt when he was still absent by nightfall. It was only on the next morning, when his absence had lasted for twenty-four hours, that it began to be commented on by some of his Brinton acquaintances. Discussing it, their doubt and anxiety grew to such a point that shortly before noon two of them drove out to the swamp in the hope of finding some trace of Morton's whereabouts. It was some hours later that they returned, and when they did so they brought with them a tale which spread over the town like flame, and which set the wires between Brinton and Chicago humming with dispatches to the latter city's newspapers.