is was a plight in which human concourse could
avail nothing.

After piling all the coal on the furnace it would hold, the volume of
heat rising from the register was such as to singe the clothes of those
over it, while those waiting their turn were shivering a few feet off.
The men of course yielded the nearest places to the women, and, as
we walked briskly up and down in the room, the frost gathered on our
mustaches. The morning, we said, would bring relief, but none of us
fully believed it, for the strange experience we were enduring appeared
to imply a suspension of the ordinary course of nature.

A number of cats and dogs, driven from their accustomed haunts by the
intense cold, had gathered under the windows, and there piteously moaned
and whined for entrance.

Swiftly it grew colder. The iron casing of the register was cold in
spite of the volume of heat pouring through it. Every point or surface
of metal in the room was covered with a thick coating of frost. The
frost even settled upon a few filaments of cobweb in the corners of the
room which had escaped the housemaid's broom, and which now shone like
hidden sins in the day of judgment. The door-knob, mop-boards, and
wooden casings of the room glistened. We were so chilled that woolen was
as cold to the touch as wood or iron. There being no more any heat in
our bodies, the non-conducting quality of a substance was no appreciable
advantage. To avoid the greater cold near the floor, several of our
number got upon the tables, presenting, with their feet tucked under
them, an aspect that would have been sufficiently laughable under other
circumstances. But, as a rule, fun does not survive the freezing point.
Every few moments the beams of the house snapped like the timbers of a
straining ship, and at intervals the frozen ground cracked with a noise
like cannon,--the hyperborean earthquake.

A ruddy light shone against the windows. Bill went and rubbed away the
ice. A neighbor's house was burning. It was one of those whose chimneys
were vomiting forth sparks when I had looked out before. There was
promise of an extensive conflagration. Nobody appeared in the streets,
and, as there were intervening houses, we could not see what became
of the inmates. The very slight interest which this threatening
conflagration aroused in our minds was doubtless a mark of the already
stupefying effect of the cold. Even our voices had become weak and
altered.

The cold is a sad