Obtruding almost into the roadway projected the end of a mighty hollow log lying beneath a mountain of smaller logs and brush, and to Keeshamok came, as he stood there undecided, a novel vision of beatitude. There were warmth and shelter. He would creep into the log, and there, with his jug to comfort him, pass such a night as Indian never passed before! He acted on the glorious impulse. He crawled far in and stretched himself out upon the soft, dry flakes of rotten wood and took deep draughts of whisky and defied the outside world! It was a solitary but a grand debauch. The hours passed and the Indian became almost torpid. He slept a little. The cold intensified and he awoke and drank again, but was still cold. He comprehended but dimly, yet another idea came to him. He would build a little fire and that would warm him! He scraped together a mound of the dry debris beyond him, and, after many efforts, got a match alight and applied it to the heap, which blazed at once. It warmed him. He took another drink and lay down again and slept. There appeared next morning beside the wood road a vast gray patch of surface upon which could be seen no object larger than a hand. The ashes of the great hollow tree and of the dead trees upon it were sifting through the forest with every wind, and with them were blown the ashes of the Indian Keeshamok. He had no body! That night something happened in South Clark Street in Chicago, something so inexplicable and startling as to pass beyond the realm of credibility. At precisely midnight, the striped Indian in front of Lipsky's barber-shop stepped from his pedestal and fled northward, without a sound. So silent and so swift his flight that those whom he met or passed felt, rather than saw, a flitting thing. The city was left behind and still northward across the frozen fields and through the woods he went. The medicine moccasins of Hiawatha never carried one more wondrously. The farms and forests of far Wisconsin were reached at last and faded by, and at last before the runner's eyes appeared the cabins of his kinsmen. What life came to him now! He bounded upward in exaltation! He burst in among the clustered habitations with the wild piercing whoop of the returning warrior! "Owannox! wah quah-quah! Kinniwa! Wow, wow, wanny-wanny-Yook! Ek-ek! Laroo!" Cabin doors burst open, dogs rushed forth, men and squaws dashed out and all was wild commotion. The voice of Keeshamok had been recognized on the instant. He leaped in among his people joyfully. Then arose such yells and shrieks as made the very woodland quiver! There was a rush for cabins whose doors were closed and barred within a minute's space. The very dogs, yelping with every leap, fled to the forest. Even they were appalled and recognized but as a spectre the missing Keeshamok. Within the Indian village all was frightful silence.