hose shivering mortals, whose
voices now mingled with the shrieking wind, calling to heaven for
relief. Mr. Eddy, knowing that all would freeze to death in the
darkness if allowed to remain exposed, succeeded after many efforts in
getting them close together between their blankets where the snow
covered them.

With the early morning, Patrick Dolan became delirious and left camp.
He was brought back with difficulty and forcibly kept under cover until
late in the day, when he sank into a stupor, whence he passed quietly
into that sleep which knows no waking.

The crucial hour had come. Food lay before the starving, yet every eye
turned from it and every hand dropped irresolute.

Another night of agony passed, during which Lemuel Murphy became
delirious and called long and loud for food; but the cold was so
intense that it kept all under their blankets until four o'clock in the
afternoon, when Mr. Eddy succeeded in getting a fire in the trunk of a
large pine tree. Whereupon, his companions, instead of seeking food,
crept forth and broke off low branches, put them down before the fire
and laid their attenuated forms upon them. The flames leaped up the
trunk, and burned off dead boughs so that they dropped on the snow
about them, but the unfortunates were too weak and too indifferent to
fear the burning brands.

Mr. Eddy now fed his waning strength on shreds of his concealed bear-meat,
hoping that he might survive to save the giver. The rest in camp
could scarcely walk, by the twenty-eighth, and their sensations of
hunger were deminishing. This condition forebode delirium and death,
unless stayed by the only means at hand. It was in very truth a pitiful
alternative offered to the sufferers.

With sickening anguish the first morsels were prepared and given to
Lemuel Murphy, but for him they were too late. Not one touched flesh of
kindred body. Nor was there need of restraining hand, or warning voice
to gauge the small quantity which safety prescribed to break the fast
of the starving. Death would have been preferable to that awful meal,
had relentless fate not said: "Take, eat that ye may live. Eat, lest ye
go mad and leave your work undone!"

All but the Indians obeyed the mandate, and were strengthened and
reconciled to prepare the remaining flesh to sustain them a few days
longer on their journey.

Hitherto, the wanderers had been guided partly by the fitful sun,
partly by Lewis and Salvador, the Indians who had c