The blizzard cleared, and when I had thawed my eyes (which were frozen up with the drifting snow) I could see a shanty about a mile off the trail. I started to it, but bad luck attended me. When I reached it, it was uninhabited, and my hands were so frozen that I could not move a finger to get in, so sat down in a shed to consider what would be best to do. Feeling perished as my feet began to freeze, I was obliged to walk on. I saw another place I knew across the prairie, about two miles from where I stood, and started for it as well as I could get along, but still worse luck attended me. I had gone only half my journey when the blizzard increased, so that it froze my eyes up and nearly choked me. I turned my back to the storm and tried to retrace my footsteps, but the snow had completely swept them out; and I was lost, as I thought, for ever. I walked on, both sore and hungry, but dared not sleep, knowing it would mean death; but could see nothing. As night came on the blizzard abated, but it was no help to me when darkness had set in. I knew it meant that I must walk or die. Suffering now with hunger and thirst, I ate some snow, but every time I took it, it pulled the skin off my lips. I walked on until I was completely played out, falling down some twenty times, sometimes seven or eight feet, and it took me some time to recover myself, not being able to use my hands, and afraid they would break; my elbows, too, began to feel sore, through the frost and falls. Once or twice I followed a bright star, thinking it might be a light in a shanty; it seemed about on a level with the snow. I had been walking until about midnight, when I fell down a bank about ten feet right into the snow, where I thought I should lay and die. I had a Scotch collie with me, and he curled up close and kept me warm. I think I must have slept a little time, as the dog was howling when I awoke. I was very stiff, and struggled more than an hour to get up the embankment. When at the top I was on the open plain, and my dog was gone. The moon was shining, and I walked on to a wood, which sheltered me a little from the cold. I was very hungry now, as I had been walking twenty hours without food, and, being famished, I had to bite the snow off the trees, though it pulled the skin off my lips. Then I lay down again for a time. Presently my dog came back, and I was very pleased to see him, thinking anything to die with was better than being alone. He left me again in the night; his feet were freezing, and he was howling with pain; but came back again when it was getting light, lying down as if he were dead.