i'll loaf down there now, same as ivery noight. In about a half an
hour ye'll come limpin' in an' ask fer Dunnigan, an' will he cook out
th' sayson fer Moncrossen? 'Twill be fun to watch Creed. He'll be
scairt shtiff an' white as a biled shirt, or he'll melt down an'
dhribble out t'rough a crack av th' flure."

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 w