Meanwhile how fared it at Starved Camp?  Mr. and Mrs. Breen being left there with their own five suffering children and the four other poor, moaning little waifs, were tortured by situations too heart-rending for description, too pitiful to seem true.  Suffice it to relate that Mrs. Breen shared with baby Graves the last lump of loaf sugar and the last drops of tea, of that which she had denied herself and had hoarded for her own babe.  When this was gone, with quivering lips she and her husband repeated the litany and prayed for strength to meet the ordeal,—­then, turning to the unburied dead, they resorted to the only means left to save the nine helpless little ones.

When Mr. Eddy and party reached them, they found much suffering from cold and crying for “something to eat,” but not the wail which precedes delirium and death.

This Third Relief Party settled for the night upon the snow near these refugees, who had twice been in the shadow of doom; and after giving them food and fire, Mr. Eddy divided his force into two sections.  Messrs. Stark, Oakley, and Stone were to remain there and nurture the refugees a few hours longer, then carry the small children, and conduct those able to walk to Mule Springs, while Eddy and three companions should hasten on to the cabins across the summit.[12]

Section Two, spurred on by paternal solicitude, resumed travel at four o’clock the following morning, and crossed the summit soon after sunrise.  The nearer they approached camp, the more anxious Messrs. Eddy and Foster became to reach the children they hoped to find alive.  Finally, they rushed ahead, as we have seen, to the Murphy cabin.  Alas! only disappointment met them there.

Even after Mrs. Murphy had repeated her pitiful answer, “Dead,” the afflicted fathers stood dazed and silent, as if waiting for the loved ones to return.

Mr. Eddy was the first to recover sufficiently for action.  Presently Simon Murphy and we three little girls were standing on the snow under a clear blue sky, and saw Hiram Miller and Mr. Thompson coming toward camp.

The change was so sudden it was difficult to understand what had happened.  How could we realize that we had passed out of that loathsome cabin, never to return; or that Mrs. Murphy, too ill to leave her bed, and Keseberg, too lame to walk, by reason of a deep cleft in his heel, made by an axe, would have to stay alone in that abode of wretchedness?

Nor could we know our mother’s anguish, as she stepped aside to arrange with Mr. Eddy for our departure.  She had told us at our own camp why she would remain.  She had parted from us there and put us in charge of men who had risked much and come far to do a heroic deed.  Later she had found us, abandoned by them, in time of direst need, and in danger of an awful death, and had warmed and cheered us back to hope and confidence.  Now, she was about to confide us to the care of a party whose leader swore either to save us or die with us on the trail.  We listened to the sound of her voice, felt her good-bye kisses, and watched her hasten away to father, over the snow, through the pines, and out of sight, and knew that we must not follow.  But the influence of her last caress, last yearning look of love and abiding faith will go with us through life.