The other stared, and took a step nearer.
"What's the matter?
Are you sick, Murphy ?" "No--tired--don't want ter see--thet thing agin." "What thing ?" "Thet green, devilish,--crawlin' face--if ye must know!" And he twisted his long, ape-like arms across his eyes, lying curled up as a dog might.
For a moment Hampton stood gazing down upon him, listening to his incoherent mutterings, his own face grave and sympathetic.

Then he moved back and sat down.

Suddenly the full conception of what this meant came to his mind--_the man had gone mad_.

The strained cords of that diseased brain had snapped in the presence of imagined terrors, and now all was chaos.

The horror of it overwhelmed Hampton; not only did this unexpected denouement leave him utterly hopeless, but what was he to do with the fellow?
How could he bring him forth from there alive?
If this stream was indeed the Tongue, then many a mile of rough country, ragged with low mountains and criss-crossed by deep ravines, yet stretched between where they now were and the Little Big Horn, where they expected to find Custer's men.