m. She succeeded in doing so, but from
weakness she was unable to stand steadily, so she reeled and staggered
towards where the corpse was laid out, and with the lighted candles set
the winding sheet on fire: the thatch caught the flame; the cabin was
burned down, and the parents of this miserable boy were rescued with the
utmost difficulty. They got more or less burned, of course, and the
ointment was therefore required for them. Having escaped death from
fire, they almost suffered death from cold, as they were left four hours
without the shelter of a roof on a bitter December day, all being afraid
to admit them lest they should catch the contagion. The doctor's third
case happened at midnight, being called on duty to the workhouse at that
hour. It was about a mile from the town--something less perhaps. Halfway
on his journey he found a man trying to raise a poor woman out of the
dyke. He went to his assistance, and found the woman paralyzed with
cold, and speechless. Locked in her arms, which were as rigid as bars
of iron, was a dead child, whilst another with its tiny icy fingers was
holding a death-grip of its mother's tattered garment. Her story was
short and simple, which she was able to tell next day: she had made an
effort to reach the workhouse, but sank exhausted where she was
discovered.

After a while the effects of famine began to manifest themselves in the
sufferers by a swelling of the extremities. Perhaps the severe cold
caused this or increased it. However that may be, experience soon taught
the people that this puffy unnatural swelling was a sure sign of
approaching dissolution.

When the cold weather had fairly set in, it frequently happened that the
straw which composed the bed, or the excuse for a bed, occupied by
members of a family dying of fever or hunger, or both combined, was,
piecemeal, drawn from under them and burned on the hearth to keep up a
scanty fire. It was felt, we may presume, that the dying could not
require it long, and those who had still some hopes of life were
famishing as much from cold as from hunger. An eye-witness, describing
such a family in Windmill-lane, Skibbereen, one of whom had already
died, thus writes: "The only article that covered the nakedness of the
family, that screened them from the cold, was a piece of coarse packing
stuff, which lay extended alike over the bodies of the living and the
corpse of the dead; which seemed as the only defence of the dying, and
t