my body, I crawled alongside Peoria Red and snuggled closely against him, hoping that our mutual body warmth would stave off the crisis to the last possible moment.  He was groaning, and mustering the last vestige of control I yet had over my benumbed hands, I searched about in the darkness until I found his frozen fingers, and clasping them in my own I placed my mouth close to his ear and pleaded with him to bid me farewell.  He was too far gone to speak, but twice a faint pressure against my frozen fingers told me that he had understood me, and I responded in the same manner.  These were our farewells to each other in this world, a fitting finish to the tragedies of our toilful and thankless lives.  I sank back into the snow and while I dreamily watched the snowflakes weave our spotless shroud, I dozed away and dreamed of those glorious, care-free days when I was yet with the “old folks” at home, chasing bright-hued butterflies in the warmth of the sunshine of youth and happiness.

The next thing I recall was a burning sensation in my throat, which involuntarily caused me to open my eyes.  I felt as if I had slept for such a long time that all my faculties had become useless, for I could not, try as I might, utter a word or move a muscle, although to this day I vividly remember having heard a man, whom I could plainly see as he poured a steaming liquid into my open mouth, exclaim:  “Thank God we are having better luck reviving this poor fellow than we had with the other one!  Look, he has just opened his eyes, and listen, can you not hear him faintly groan?” Then I wandered back into dream-land—­into a most dangerous delirium which lasted for several weeks and during which I hung as if by a mere thread, betwixt life and death.

When I recovered my reason, I found that I was domiciled in the bunk house, that together with the section house and tool house form the total of buildings upon every railroad “section” reservation.  The foreman and his family resided in the section house, a two-story building; the tool house was used for storing the hand car and the track tools, while the bunk house, a small, one-story building, formed primarily the sleeping quarters, and secondly the social center of the section crew, whose five roughly dressed men were only permitted to enter the adjacent section house, where they boarded, at meal hours, as the foreman’s home was at all other times considered by them a sort of hallowed spot.  But the bunk house was their own, as within it they slept at night in the wooden “bunks”, which were nailed one adjoining the other, all around the boarded walls, while in the center a small stove in which a roaring fire was kept up, made things comfortable for the inmates when they returned in the evenings after their day’s work was done, and all day every Sunday—­their day of rest.

While the men were absent and I was yet unable to attend to my needs, a sweet-faced lady looked after my wants and gave me my medicine.  She was the foreman’s wife, and her ever cheering words with never a sign of weariness that I, a sick and penniless harvester, should have so unexpectedly become a charge upon her hands, were most grateful to me.