hed her sad story she asked us to give her our
opinion as to the cause of the baby's disappearance. One of our men had
the most likely solution of the riddle as he thought that the baby had
watched her brothers discard their overcoats, and later their coats, as
the exercise while skating warmed them, and Helen, childlike, thinking
this the proper thing, had in a playful mood discarded her clothes,
intending to skate barefooted upon the glistening ice, and finding that
the cold snow hurt her feet, and being unable to don her garments, had
wandered out upon the bleak prairie and had been frozen to death, the
fate that had overtaken Peoria Red and so many strong men.

Leaving one man to act as nurse to the foreman, we others returned to
the bunk house, as Mr. McDonald's heavy and regular breathing assured us
that he would at least rest peacefully until the following morning.

For several days, undaunted by constant failures to accomplish anything,
we carefully searched the right of way and the prairie for our pet, and
had Spot, the collie, assist us, but finally were forced to believe that
little Helen had departed for the land of the Angels.

In the evenings, to while away the hours and to be in readiness when in
the Spring the warm rays of the sun would remove the snowy shroud and
reveal to us her mortal remains, we constructed a small coffin, that we
carefully painted a somber black, and we also whittled another white
cross, which should in due time mark her eternal resting place.

For weeks Foreman McDonald raved in a high fevered delirium, but
gradually, assisted by the railroad company's physician, who made
frequent calls at the section house, and the loving aid and attention of
his ever faithful wife, he rallied so far that he again became able to
take us out on the track and personally direct our work.

Night after night, for months after her disappearance, when our supper
had been served at the big house, and we had returned to the bunk house
and had blown out the lamp before retiring, the stern foreman, now only
a broken hearted father, yearning for his own sweet baby girl, would
slip noiselessly, and he thought unobserved, out of the front door of
the section house, and slink stealthily to the very spot where his
darling's tiny garments had been found, and there amid heart-rending
shrieks, which we in our bunk house could plainly hear above the weird
moanings of the winter storms, he would dig with his bare h