l tenement--it had a better
dwelling-place on high.

With two of their little number in the icy embraces of death, some plan
to obtain warmth for the living was immediately necessary. W. H. Eddy
proposed a frontiersman's method. It was for all to huddle closely
together in a circle, lie down on a blanket with their heads outward,
and be covered with a second blanket. Mr. Eddy arranged his companions,
spread the blanket over them, and creeping under the coverlid, completed
the circle. The wind swept the drifting snow in dense clouds over their
heads. The chilling air, already white with falling snowflakes, became
dense with the drifting masses. In a little while the devoted band
were completely hidden from wind, or storm, or piercing cold, by a
deep covering of snow. The warmth of their bodies, confined between the
blankets, under the depth of snow, soon rendered them comfortably
warm. Their only precaution now was to keep from being buried
alive. Occasionally some member of the party would shake the rapidly
accumulating snow from off their coverlid.

They no longer were in danger of freezing. But while the elements were
vainly waging fierce war above their heads, hunger was rapidly sapping
the fountains of life, and claiming them for its victims. When, for a
moment, sleep would steal away their reason, in famished dreams they
would seize with their teeth the hand or arm of a companion. The
delirium of death had attacked one or two, and the pitiful wails and
cries of these death-stricken maniacs were heart-rending. The dead, the
dying, the situation, were enough to drive one crazy.

The next day was ushered in by one of the most furious storms ever
witnessed on the Sierra. All the day long, drifts and the fast-falling
snow circled above them under the force of the fierce gale. The air was
a frozen fog of swift-darting ice-lances. The fine particles of snow
and sleet, hurled by maddened storm-fiends, would cut and sting so that
one's eyes could not be opened in the storm, and the rushing gale would
hurl one prostrate on the snow. Once or twice the demented Dolan escaped
from his companions and disappeared in the blinding storm. Each time he
returned or was caught and dragged 'neath the covering, but the fatal
exposure chilled the little life remaining in his pulses. During the
afternoon he ceased to shriek, or struggle, or moan. Patrick Dolan, the
warm-hearted Irishman, was starved to death.

Mr. Eddy states, in Thorn