A dead man drifts down the Kennebec River on a bitter late-November night as the water begins to freeze around him. His soaked clothes and boots weigh him down, and the narration makes clear that he was killed only about an hour earlier.

The chapter then explains how small choices helped lead to his death. The man had taken a strip of lace and was hurrying to leave while already in trouble; if he had been more careful, he might have heard the people pursuing him in the forest and hidden from them. Instead, because he was reckless, impatient, and left tracks in the snow, his assailants found him easily.

A struggle followed. The man’s hair came loose, the lace was taken back and stuffed into a pocket, and during the attack he was thrown into the river. His body, broken and tangled, is carried another quarter mile before the thickening ice stops the current and traps him fifteen feet from shore, his face just beneath the surface.

The narration widens to place the death within a larger historical moment. An unusually early freeze has come to Hallowell, Maine, and the coming season will be remembered as the Year of the Long Winter. The dead man will become part of that legend, though the sleeping townspeople do not yet know it.

In the final image, a fox cautiously ventures onto the ice and approaches the trapped body. After sniffing the frozen riverbank and the distant scent of woodsmoke, she begins to howl, signaling that the hidden death on the river is about to be discovered.