And so, a half-hour later, Bill Carmody for the second time pushed open Hod Burrage's door and made his way to the stove. The scene in no wise differed from the time of his previous visit. Slabs of bacon still hung from the roof logs beside the row of tin coffee-pots; the sawdust-filled box was still the object of intermittent bombardment by the tobacco-chewers, the uncertainty of whose aim was mutely attested by the generous circumference of brown-stained floor of which the box was the center. Grouped about the stove, upon counter, barrel-head, and up-ended goods box, were the same decaying remnants of the moldering town's vanishing population. The thick, cloudy glass with its sticky edges still circulated for the common good, and above the heads of the unkempt men the air reeked gray with the fumes of rank tobacco. Only the man who entered had changed. In his bearing was no hint of superiority nor intolerance; he advanced heartily, hailing these men as equals and friends. Near the stove he halted, leaning upon his crutch, and swept the group with a glance. "Good evening! Do any one of you men happen to be named Dunnigan?" From the moment the tap of Bill's crutch sounded upon the wooden floor, Creed, who had paused in the middle of a sentence of his highly colored narrative, stared at the newcomer as one would ordinarily stare when a person known to be dead casually steps up and bids one good evening. His mouth did not open, his lower jaw merely sagged away from his face, exposing his tongue lying thick and flabby upon yellow teeth. His out-bulging eyes fixed the features of the man before him with a glassy, unwinking stare, like the stare of a fish. Into his brain, at first, came no thought at all merely a dumb sense of unreasoning terror under which his muscles went flaccid, and out of control, so that his body shrank limp and heavy against its backing of bolt-goods. Then, suddenly a rush of thoughts crowded his brain, tangled thoughts, and weird--of deep significance, but without sequence nor reason. What had they told of this man in the woods? How he had battled hand to claw with the werwolf and received no hurt. How he had cowed the boss with a look, and laid the mighty Stromberg cold in the batting of an eye. He himself had, but twenty hours since, seen this man lying helpless upon the floor of a locked shack, ringed round with roaring flames, beyond any human possibility of escape. And here he stood, crippled beyond peradventure of trail-travel, yet fresh and unfatigued, forty miles from the scene of his burning! A thin trickle of ice crept downward along his spine and, overmastering all other emotions, came the desire to be elsewhere. He slid from the counter and, as his feet touched the floor, his knees crumpled and he sprawled his length almost at the feet of the man who could not die.