He finally collapsed with his friend John De La Ronde, who recalled that Rowney "awoke up in the night with terror, jumped close to my bed, and told me that the devil wanted to take him away. I pushed him with force, and told him that if the devil had him, he had no business with me. He began to cry and lament over his condition, keeping it up some time."

In the morning, Rowney vowed to start a new life and set out for Madison. Two hours later, though, a mail carrier reported passing a man four or five miles up the road crying and groaning, apparently out of his mind.

De La Ronde and four friends went to bring Rowney home. They traced his footprints to a shallow creek in which was a grassy island ringed by undisturbed sand. "We measured it all around and I found it twenty-five and a half feet on either side to where any trees or grass grew," De La Ronde wrote. "On that patch of grass thus surrounded, we found his coat, vest, pants, hat, and other clothing, but no trace of himself."

Portage residents, soldiers from Fort Winnebago, and Ho-Chunk trackers searched the area for two days without finding any trace of Rowney. He had vanished into thin air.

La Ronde, not wanting to credit the devil, concluded that "what became of him was a mystery."

But nothing was ever heard of Rowney again.

— Wisconsin Historical Society
www.wisconsinhistory.org

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