yielded, and the next moment that whirlwind
was in the house, -- a maddening tumult of
ice and wind, leaving no room for resistance;
a killing cold, against which it was futile to
fight. Catherine threw the bedclothes over
the heads of the children, and then threw
herself across the bunk, gasping and chok-
ing for breath. Her body would not have
yielded to the suffering yet, so strongly
made and sustained was it; but her dismay
stifled her. She saw in one horrified moment
the frozen forms of her babies, now so pink
and pleasant to the sense; and oblivion came
to save her from further misery.

She was alive -- just barely alive -- when
Gillispie and Henderson got there, three
hours later, the very balls of their eyes
almost frozen into blindness. But for an
instinct stronger than reason they would
never have been able to have found their
way across that trackless stretch. The chil-
dren lying unconscious under their coverings
were neither dead nor actually frozen, al-
though the men putting their hands on their
little hearts could not at first discover the
beating. Stiff and suffering as these young
fellows were, it was no easy matter to get
the window back into place and re-light the
fire. They had tied flasks of liquor about