n that would
very likely, but for him, have been taken by force, caused the
passengers to defer to him as a leader whose strength and courage fitted
him for the post, and so he presided at the distribution of the chickens
without dispute.

The fuel in the stoves was replenished, and quite a large space was
cleared to the leeward of the locomotive, where a fire was built from
the neighboring fences, so that in an hour's time from the finding of
the poultry the entire body of passengers were busy picking the bones of
roasted and broiled fowls. It was not so bad a dinner! To be sure, it
was rather chilly, now and then, when the opening of a car-door, to
let in a half-frozen gentleman with a half-cooked chicken in his hand,
admitted with him a snow-laden blast from without; and then the viands
were not served _a la Soyer_, but there was an appetite for sauce and a
certain gypsy-like feeling of being at a picnic that served as a relish.
And so, in the year of our Lord 18--, two hundred strangers sat down
together at a most extraordinary Thanksgiving-dinner, of which no
account has hitherto been published, if I except a vote of thanks,
"together with an exceedingly chaste and richly chased silver goblet,"
(so the newspaper description read,) which were presented to the
conductor by "the surviving passengers," after he had procured help and
rescued them from their perplexing predicament.

But dinners end. Twelve o'clock came, and still the snow was falling
thick and fast, and still the white plain about them mounted slowly and
surely towards the skies. Then the passengers became yet more weary and
unhappy. Old Woollen, the unfortunate, detailed his woes to more and
more appreciative audiences. Even the Funny Man--with a fresh flask of
whiskey--sighed almost dismally between frequent uneasy "cat-naps." And
Samson Newell, first seeing his wife comfortably settled, and his little
ones safely disposed about her, strode up and down, from car to car,
with a gloom of disappointment on his face that was almost ferocious.
"Too bad!" he muttered, "too bad! too bad! too bad!"

One o'clock came, and the snow held up! At first the passengers noticed
that the flakes fell less thickly. Then, gradually and ever slowly
decreasing, they finally ceased falling altogether. The clouds drifted
from before the face of the heavens, and the sun came out. It shone over
a broad surface of glistening snow, with here and there a fence-post
obtruding in