And so, indeed, it was.

It is soon told.  Exhausted to the point of emaciation, the French Canadian—­what was left of him, that is—­fumbled among the ashes, trying to make a fire.  His body crouched there, the weak fingers obeying feebly the instinctive habit of a lifetime with twigs and matches.  But there was no longer any mind to direct the simple operation.  The mind had fled beyond recall.  And with it, too, had fled memory.  Not only recent events, but all previous life was a blank.

This time it was the real man, though incredibly and horribly shrunken.  On his face was no expression of any kind whatever—­fear, welcome, or recognition.  He did not seem to know who it was that embraced him, or who it was that fed, warmed and spoke to him the words of comfort and relief.  Forlorn and broken beyond all reach of human aid, the little man did meekly as he was bidden.  The “something” that had constituted him “individual” had vanished for ever.

In some ways it was more terribly moving than anything they had yet seen—­that idiot smile as he drew wads of coarse moss from his swollen cheeks and told them that he was “a damned moss-eater”; the continued vomiting of even the simplest food; and, worst of all, the piteous and childish voice of complaint in which he told them that his feet pained him—­“burn like fire”—­which was natural enough when Dr. Cathcart examined them and found that both were dreadfully frozen.  Beneath the eyes there were faint indications of recent bleeding.

The details of how he survived the prolonged exposure, of where he had been, or of how he covered the great distance from one camp to the other, including an immense detour of the lake on foot since he had no canoe—­all this remains unknown.  His memory had vanished completely.  And before the end of the winter whose beginning witnessed this strange occurrence, Defago, bereft of mind, memory and soul, had gone with it.  He lingered only a few weeks.

And what Punk was able to contribute to the story throws no further light upon it.  He was cleaning fish by the lake shore about five o’clock in the evening—­an hour, that is, before the search party returned—­when he saw this shadow of the guide picking its way weakly into camp.  In advance of him, he declares, came the faint whiff of a certain singular odour.

That same instant old Punk started for home.  He covered the entire journey of three days as only Indian blood could have covered it.  The terror of a whole race drove him.  He knew what it all meant.  Defago had “seen the Wendigo.”