flames. Along in the night, Mr. Foster thinks it was near midnight, the
heat of the flames and the dropping coals and embers thawed the snow
underneath the fire until a deep, well-like cavity was formed about the
fire. Suddenly, as if to intensify the dreadful horrors of the
situation, the bottom of this well gave way, and the fire disappeared!
The camp and the fire had been built over a stream of water, and the
fire had melted through the overlying snow until it had fallen into the
stream! Those who peered over the brink of the dark opening about which
they were gathered, could hear, far down in the gloom, during the lull
of the storm, the sound of running waters.

If there is anything lacking in this picture of despair, it is furnished
in the groans and cries of the shivering, dying outcasts, and the
demoniacal shrieks and ravings of Patrick Dolan, who was in the delirium
which precedes death. It was not necessary that life should be taken by
the members of the company. Death was busily at work, and before the
wild winter night was ended, his ghastly victims were deaf to wind or
storm.

When the fire disappeared, it became apparent that the entire forlorn
hope would perish before morning if exposed to the cold and storm. W. H.
Eddy says the wind increased until it was a perfect tornado. About
midnight, Antoine overcome by starvation, fatigue, and the bitter cold,
ceased to breathe. Mr. F. W. Graves was dying. There was a point beyond
which an iron nerve and a powerful constitution were unable to sustain a
man. This point had been reached, and Mr. Graves was fast passing away.
He was conscious, and calling his weeping, grief-stricken daughters to
his side, exhorted them to use every means in their power to prolong
their lives. He reminded them of their mother, of their little brothers
and sisters in the cabin at the lake. He reminded Mrs. Pike of her poor