s began to stir and give signs of life, one
after another, and each in turn pushed his slouched hat up from his
forehead, stretched his stiffened limbs, and glanced out of the windows
upon the cheerless prospect. It was cheer less, indeed!-not a living
thing visible anywhere, not a human habitation; nothing but a vast white
desert; uplifted sheets of snow drifting hither and thither before the
wind--a world of eddying flakes shutting out the firmament above.

"All day we moped about the cars, saying little, thinking much. Another
lingering dreary night--and hunger.

"Another dawning--another day of silence, sadness, wasting hunger,
hopeless watching for succor that could not come. A night of restless
slumber, filled with dreams of feasting--wakings distressed with the
gnawings of hunger.

"The fourth day came and went--and the fifth! Five days of dreadful
imprisonment! A savage hunger looked out at every eye. There was in it
a sign of awful import--the foreshadowing of a something that was vaguely
shaping itself in every heart--a something which no tongue dared yet to
frame into words.

"The sixth day passed--the seventh dawned upon as gaunt and haggard and
hopeless a company of men as ever stood in the shadow of death. It must
out now! That thing which had been growing up in every heart was ready
to leap from every lip at last! Nature had been taxed to the utmost--she
must yield. RICHARD H. GASTON of Minnesota, tall, cadaverous, and pale,
rose up. All knew what was coming. All prepared--every emotion, every
semblance of excitement--was smothered--only a calm, thoughtful
seriousness appeared in the eyes that were lately so wild.

"'Gentlemen: It cannot be delayed longer! The time is at hand! We must
determine which of us shall die to furnish food for the rest!'

"MR. JOHN J. WILLIAMS of Illinois rose and said: 'Gentlemen--I nominate
the Rev. James Sawyer of Tennessee.'

"MR. Wm. R. ADAMS of Indiana said: 'I nominate Mr. Daniel Slote of New
York.'

"MR. CHARLES J. LANGDON: 'I nominate Mr. Samuel A. Bowen of St. Louis.'

"MR. SLOTE: 'Gentlemen--I desire to decline in favor of Mr. John A. Van
Nostrand, Jun., of New Jersey.'

"MR. GASTON: 'If there be no objection, the gentleman's desire will be
acceded to.'

"MR. VAN NOSTRAND objecting, the resignation of Mr. Slote was rejected.
The resignations of Messrs. Sawyer and Bowen were also offered, and
refused upon the same grounds.

"MR. A. L. BASCO