Ten surgeons were, at one time, crowded into one small house, where the worst cases were placed. By morning, however, the amputation was performed by Dr. J. C. Hubbard, assisted by Drs. Fricker and Case, and about twenty of the wounded, including the fireman and engineer, were removed to the hospital in Cleveland. This relieved many of those who were at the Eagle Hotel, as they found comfortable quarters at the hospital, and the rest were taken into rooms where a fire could be built, and where a carpet covered the floor; but through all the night the fire continued to burn. The haggard dawn drove the darkness out of the valley of the shadow of death. Seldom was revealed a ghastlier sight. On either side of the ravine, frowned the dark and bare arches from which the treacherous bridge had fallen, while, at their base, the great mass of ruins covered the men and women and children, who had so suddenly been called to death. The cherished bodies lay where they had fallen, or where they had been placed, in the hurry and confusion of the night. Piles of iron lay on the thick ice or bedded in the shallow stream. The fires smouldered in great heaps where many of the helpless victims had been consumed; while men went about, in wild confusion, seeking some trace of their friends among the wounded or dead. [Illustration] CHAPTER XI. THE PUBLIC EXCITEMENT. The morning dawned. Those who had known of the event, awoke as if from a fearful dream. The horror of the great calamity haunted the sleeping hours, and came back with returning consciousness. The dream was, indeed, a sad reality. The bodies, which were wrapped in the sleep of death and whose bed was the driven snow, were the first thought at the awakening of the living; nothing else was thought of in the village. Those who had not heard of it were startled by the news, but those who had seen and known, were strangely impressed. The smell of the burning flesh seemed to pervade the air. The sight of dead bodies seemed to fill the eye. The flames--the fearful flames--the ghastly wounds, the blackened bodies and the unknown, unburied dead were before the mind. Death had descended like a bird of night, and flapped a dark wing over the abodes of the living, casting a shadow over the whole place, and then descended into the valley and was still watching its victims. There was something fearful in such an awful devastation by the dread monster.