tands out with any bright gleam.
Christmas was near, and there was no way of making it a happy time.
But my mother was determined to give us a treat on that day. She had
hidden away a small store of provisions--a few dried apples, some
beans, a bit of tripe, and a small piece of bacon. These she brought
out, and when we saw the treasures we shouted for joy, and watched the
meal cooking with hunger-sharpened eyes. Mother smiled at our delight
and cautioned:

"'Children, eat slowly, for this one day you can have all you wish!'
and never has any Christmas feast since driven out of my memory that
most memorable one at Donner Lake.

"Somehow or other the cold dark days and weeks passed, but as they
went by our store of supplies grew less and less, and many died from
cold and hunger. Frequently we had to cut chips from the inside of our
cabin to start a fire, and we were so weak from want of food that we
could scarcely drag ourselves from one cabin to the other, and so four
dreadful months wore away. Then came a day when a fact stared us in
the face. We were starving. With an almost superhuman strength mother
roused. 'I am going to walk across the mountains,' she said; 'I cannot
see my children die for lack of food.' Quickly I stood beside her. 'I
will go, too,' I said. Up rose Milt and Eliza. 'We will go with you,'
they said. Leaving the children to be cared for by the Breens and
Murphys, we made a brave start. Milt led the way on snow-shoes and we
followed in his tracks, but Eliza gave out on the first day and had to
go back, and after five days in the mountains, we, too, turned back
and mother was almost exhausted, and we went back just in time, for
that night there was the most fearful storm of the winter, and we
should have died if we had not had the shelter of our cabins. My feet
had been badly frozen, and mother was utterly spent from climbing one
high mountain after another, but we felt no lasting bad effects from
the venture. But we had no food! Our cabins were roofed over with
hides, which now we had to take down and boil for food. They saved
life, but to eat them was like eating a pot of glue, and I could not
swallow them. The roof of our cabin having been taken off, the Breens
gave us a shelter, and when Mrs. Breen discovered what I had tried to
hide from my own family, that I could not eat the hide, she gave me
little bits of meat now and then from their fast-dwindling store.

"One thing was my great comfort f