. He hears them tell of a
place where this mighty demonstration will be made, and a torrent of
memory sweeps him backward over eighty years. He thinks of one awful day
and night. An irresistible longing to look again upon the regions he has
not seen for more than three-quarters of a century, a wild desire to
revisit the junction of the river and the great blue lake, and to wander
where the sandreaches and the cottonwood tree were, possesses him. And,
resolute as ever, he acts upon the impulse which now becomes a plan.

An old man, as strangely placed as some old gray elk among a herd of
buffalo, is hurried along the swarming, roaring thoroughfares of a
great city. He has found the river and the lake, but nothing else save
pandemonium. He is seeking now the place where the cottonwood tree
stood, though he scarcely hopes to find it. He asks what his course
shall be, and is answered kindly. He finds his way to a broad
thoroughfare bearing the blue lake's name, and is told to seek
Eighteenth Street, and there walk toward the water. He does as he is
directed, and--marvelous to him, now--he finds the Tree.

There it stands, the cottonwood of the massacre, with blunt white limbs
outstretched and dead, as dead as those who were slaughtered at its base
and whose very bones have long been dust. The old man walks about it as
in a dream. He finds the spot where was the brush-heap beneath which he
passed shuddering hours so long ago, and he stands there upon a modern
pavement. The marble piles of rich men loom above him on each side.
Where were the sand ridges cast up by the lake, rush by the burdened
railroad trains. He cannot comprehend it--but there is more to come.

The old man has sought the oak-dotted prairie miles to the south.
Surely, something, somewhere must be unchanged! He has attained the spot
where the trees were densest. He is in a swirl of hosts. He looks upon
vast, splendid structures, such as the world has never seen before.
Through shining thoroughfares are surging the people of all nations.
And here was where the Miami Indian found the boy!

An old man is sitting again in his cabin in the far Northwest. He is
wondering, wondering if it has been but a dream, his old-age journey.
How could it be real? Surely there was once the fort where the river
joined the lake, and there were the yellow sand-ridges, and the low,
green prairie and the wilderness. He had seen them. They were there,
familiar to the pioneers, the