Connecticut western news., 1892-04-21

LOTS 1TOIu Iu6 IOChS, dud Lll0 DhIh HUH the branches of dead trees.
 "Soon. so awful was it all, great dis trust grew up among us. Each man feared that he would be slain and eaten by his nelghbor. After that none of us dared sleep. ....
 "For two nights and days we stood and sat around that roaring fire with unclosed, glaring eyes. ..
 "Then the end came. One after an- other our overstrained minds succumbed. We yelled and laughed and danced about like the maniacs we were, CUTS ing the gold which had lured us into our trouble, the mountains which shut us off from our fellow beings, the snow, the fire, God and each other.
 "That night, from sheer exhaustion, we fell like stricken beeves in the snow around the fire, and while the others slept, arose and took an ax and slew them-all of them-ny six poor com rades.
 And then, having killed them, cut great chunks of flesh from their dead, helpless bodies, which cooked and ate.
 "How long this fearful feast was kept up do not know, but it must have been for considerable time, for it was many weeks after the storm had ended before some settlers found me, in a valley to the westward, prone upon the ground and breathing heavily.
 II was picked up and nursed through a terrible fever, which followed, every moment of which l made hideous with muttered disclosures of my doubts and fears and orgies around that awful camp fire.
 1.-Two months later, as soon as I was we'll enough, came back east to my young wife, but without any knowledge of my crimes. I had no recollection whatever of the period I described to you. Those to whom | recited its par ticulars at the time of my illness re- garded everything I disclosed as mere mad ravings-the Authorizations of fever and weakness. And so it was not till my return to California, year later, that l was told of my sickbed con- fessions.
 "No sooner did hear them, though, than it all came back to me with the most fearful clearness-the mocking snow, the maddening hunger, the dis trust my comrades and I bore each other, the murders, the cannibalism- everything. ...
 Well, MT. Greenwood, after I was told of my fever rawlings, went to Don ner lake and searched till found that valley of death beyond it. still had hope that I might have been only deliri- ous after all. But at the site of that wretched camp fire was evidence beyond doubting, the bones of my murdered comrades, our arms, tools, all the famil- jar and damning array. It was more than conclusive. 1 surrendered myself to the authorities, who thought me labor ing under delusion. They instituted private investigation, but were con- fronted with so many clements of doubt that they soon dismissed me with the opinion that it was case in which the Almighty alone had jurisdiction.
 ''So l left my merciful judges and came home.
 ''But terrifying fear had seized me in that Californian courtroom which my subsequent studies satisfied me was only too we'll grounded. MT. Green wood, have consulted every obtainable authority on the subject of heredity, and substituting other names and places have laid the matter before the most eminent specialists. The result in each and every instance is the same. Not one ray of hope offers itself from any source. My daughter cannot marry, because sooner or later either she or her children will inherit from me an appe- tite for human feshv'
 For brief interval, perhaps minute, Kenneth Greenwood sat staring at Tul- kingham in mortified silence. The sig nifcance of what he had heard was so overwhelming that he could not grasp it all at once. Presently his lungs filed with a gasp, and then, stiflin3 into 8 moan the impulse to shriek out his de- spair, he ran out of the house and rushed swiftly away in the darkness, unnamed, hopeless, wrecked, fleeing from the un- movable and unseen. - Pittsburg Leader.