The story is set just outside of Boston, in a swamp because the main character, Tom, wanted to take a shortcut. While the man was taking a break in an abandoned indian camp, he found a head with an axe in it. The head represents death, and the swamp represents Tom moral morass. The tone was about how greed and selfishness can ruin a man. In this story the mood is eerie. "And shook many tall sinners down upon their knees," suggests that many of those sinners found that their spiritual lives were more important than their physical lives. "Whose ribs were as articulate as the bars of a gridiron," is a simile that shows how the horse has starved so much that it ribs were easily
