and weary attendance on me during my fever last spring kept her down
awhile--but now she is sprouting fast and fair as a lily, and may
the blessing of God be as dew and as sunshine to our sweet flower
all the days she bloometh upon this earth." "Aye Agnes," replied the
father, "we are not very old yet--though we are getting older--and a
few years will bring her to women's estate, and what thing on this
earth, think ye, human or brute, would ever think of injuring her?
Why I was speaking about her yesterday to the minister as he was
riding by, and he told me that none answered at the Examination
in the Kirk so well as Hannah.--Poor thing--I well think she has
all the Bible by heart--indeed, she has read but little else--only
some stories, too true ones, of the blessed martyrs, and some o'
the auld sangs o' Scotland, in which there is nothing but what is
good, and which, to be sure, she sings, God bless her, sweeter than
any laverock." "Aye--were we both to die this very night, she would
be happy--not that she would forget us, all the days of her life.
But have you not seen, husband, that God always makes the orphan
happy?--None so little lonesome as they! They come to make friends
o' all the bonny and sweet things in the world around them, and
all the kind hearts in the world make friends o' them. They come
to know that God is more especially the father o' them on earth
whose parents he has taken up to heaven--and therefore it is that
they for whom so many have fears, fear not at all for themselves,
but go dancing and singing along like children whose parents are
both alive! Would it not be so with our dear Hannah? So douce and
thoughtful a child--but never sad nor miserable--ready it is true
to shed tears for little, but as ready to dry them up and break
out into smiles! I know not why it is, husband, but this night my
heart warms toward her, beyond usual. The moon and stars are at this
moment looking down upon her, and she looking up to them, as she
is glinting homewards over the snow. I wish she were but here, and
taking the comb out o' her bonny hair, and letting it all fall down
in clusters before the fire, to melt away the cranreuch!"
While the parents were thus speaking of their daughter a loud sugh
of wind came suddenly over the cottage, and the leafless ash-tree
under whose shelter it stood, creaked and groaned dismally, as it
passed by.--The father started up, and going again to the door,
saw that a sudden change had come over the face of the night. The
moon had nearly disappeared, and was just visible in a dim yellow,
glimmering in the sky.--All the remote stars were obscured, and only
one or two faintly seemed in a sky that half an hour before was
perfectly cloudless, but that was now driven with rack, and mist,
and sleet, the whole atmosphere being in commotion. He stood for
a single moment to observe the direction of this unforseen storm,
and then hastily asked for his staff. "I thought I had been more
weather-wise--A storm is coming down from the Cairnbrae-hawse, and
we shall have nothing but a wild night." He then whistled on his
dog--an old sheep dog, too old for its former labours and set off to
meet his daughter, who might then, for aught he knew, be crossing
the Black-moss.
The mother accompanied her husband to the door, and took a long
frightened look at the angry sky. As she kept gazing, it became
still more terrible. The last shred of blue was extinguished--the
wind went whirling in roaring eddies, and great flakes of snow
circled about in the middle air, whether drifted up from the ground,
or driven down from the clouds, the fear-striken mother knew not,
but she at least knew, that it seemed a night of danger, despair,
and death. "Lord have mercy on us James, what will become of our
poor bairn!" But her husband heard not her words, for he was already
out of sight in the snow storm, and she was left to the terror of
her own soul in that lonesome cottage.
Little Hannah Lee had left her master's house, soon as the rim of
the great moon was seen by her eyes, that had been long anxiously
watching it from the window, rising like a joyful dream, over the
gloomy mountain-tops; and all by herself she tripped along beneath
the beauty of the silent heaven. Still as she kept ascending and
descending the knolls that lay in the bosom of the glen, she sung
to herself a song, a hymn, or a psalm, without the accompaniment
of the streams, now all silent in the frost; and ever and anon she
stopped to try to count the stars that lay in some more beautiful
part of the sky, or gazed, on the constellations that she knew,
and called them, in her joy, by the names they bore among the
shepherds.--There were none to hear her voice, or see her smiles,
but the ear and eye of Providence. As on she glided and took her
looks from heaven, she saw her own little fire-side--her parents
waiting for her arrival--the bible opened for worship--her own
little room kept so neatly for her, with its mirror hanging by the
window, in which to braid her hair by the morning light--her bed
prepared for her by her mother's hand--the primroses in her garden
peeping through the snow--old Tray, who ever welcomed her home with
his dim white eyes--the poney and the cow; friends all, and inmates
of that happy household. So stepped she along, while the snow
diamonds glittering around her feet, and the frost wove a wreath of
lucid pearls around her forehead.
She had now reached the edge of the Black-moss, which lay half way
between her master's and her father's dwelling, when she heard a
loud noise coming down from Glen-Scrae, and in a few seconds, she
felt on her face some flakes of snow. She looked up the glen, and
saw the snow storm coming down, fast as a flood. She felt no fears;
but she ceased her song; and had there been a human eye to look upon
her there, it might have seen a shadow on her face. She continued
her course, and felt bolder and bolder every step that brought her
nearer to her parent's house. But the snow storm had now reached
the Black-moss, and the broad line of light that had lain in the
direction of her home, was soon swallowed up, and the child was in
utter darkness. She saw nothing but the flakes of snow, interminably
intermingled, and furiously wafted in the air, close to her head;
she heard nothing but one wild, fierce, fitful howl. The cold became
intense, and her little feet and hands were fast, being benumbed
into insensibility.
"It is a fearful change," muttered the child to herself, but still
she did not fear, for she had been born in a moorland cottage, and
lived all her days among the hardships of the hills.--"What will
become of the poor sheep," thought she,--but still she scarcely
thought of her own danger, for innocence and youth, and joy, are
slow to think of ought evil befalling themselves, and thinking
benignly of all living things, forget their own fear in their pity
of others' sorrow.--At last, she could no longer discern a single
mark on the snow, either of human steps, or of sheep track, or the
foot print of a wild-fowl. Suddenly, too, she felt out of breath and
exhausted,--and shedding tears for herself at last sank down in the
snow.
It was now that her heart began to quake for fear. She remembered
stories of the shepherds lost in the snow,--of a mother and child
frozen to death on that very moor,--and, in a moment she knew that
she was to die. Bitterly did the poor child weep, for death was
terrible to her, who, though poor, enjoyed the bright little world
of youth and innocence. The skies of heaven were dearer than she
knew to her,--so were the flowers of earth. She had been happy
at her work--happy in her sleep--happy in the kirk on Sabbath. A
thousand thoughts had the solitary child,--and in her own heart
was a spring of happiness, pure and undisturbed as any fount that
sparkles unseen all the year through, in some quiet nook among the
pastoral hills. But now there was to be an end of all this,--she was
to be frozen to death--and lie there till the thaw might come; and
then her father would find her body, and carry it away to be buried
in the kirk-yard.
The tears were frozen on her cheeks as soon as shed--and scarcely
had her little hands strength to clasp themselves together, as she
thought of an overruling and merciful Lord came across her heart.
Then, indeed, the fears of this religious child were calmed, and she
heard without terror, the plover's wailing cry, and the deep boom of
the bittern sounding in the moss. "I will repeat the Lord's prayer."
And drawing her plaid more closely around her, she whispered beneath
its ineffectual cover; "Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed
be thy name,--thy kingdom come--thy will be done on earth as it is
in heaven." Had human aid been within fifty yards, it could have
been of no avail--eye could not see her--ear could not hear her in
that howling darkness. But that low prayer was heard in the centre
of eternity--and that little sinless child was lying in the snow,
beneath the all-seeing eye of God.
The maiden having prayed to her Father in Heaven--then thought of
her Father on earth. Alas! they were not far separated! The father
was lying but a short distance from his child; he too had sunk down
in the drifting snow, after having in less than an hour, exhausted
all the strength of fear, pity, hope, despair, and resignation, that
could rise in a father's heart, blindly seeking to rescue his only
child from death, thinking that one desperate exertion might enable
them to die in each other's arms. There they lay, within a stone's
throw of each other, while a huge snow drift was every moment piling
itself up into a more insurmountable barrier between the dying
parent and his dying child.
There was all this while a blazing fire in the cottage--a white
spread table--and beds prepared for the family to lie down in peace.
Yet was she who sat thereon more to be pitied than the old man and
the child stretched upon the snow. "I will not go to seek them--that
would be tempting Providence--and wilfully putting out the lamp
of life. No! I will abide here, and pray for their souls?" Then
as she knelt down, looked she at the useless fire burning away so
cheerfully, when all she loved might be dying of cold--and unable
to bear the thought, she shrieked out a prayer, as if she might
pierce the sky up to the very throne of God, and send with it her
own miserable soul, to plead before Him for the deliverance of her
child and husband.--She then fell down in blessed forgetfulness
of all trouble, in the midst of the solitary cheerfulness of that
bright-burning hearth--and the bible, which she had been trying to
read in the pause of her agony, remained clasped in her hands.
Hannah Lee had been a servant for more than six months--and it was
not to be thought that she was not beloved in her master's family.
Soon after she had left the house, her master's son, a youth of
about eighteen years, who had been among the hills, looking after
the sheep, came home, and was disappointed to find that he had
lost an opportunity of accompanying Hannah part of the way to her
father's cottage. But the hour of eight had gone by, and not even
the company of young William Grieve, could induce the kind-hearted
daughter to delay sitting out on her journey, a few minutes beyond
the time promised to her parents. "I do not like the night," said
William--"there will be a fresh fall of snow soon, or the witch
of Glen Scrae is a liar, for a snow-cloud is hanging o'er the
birch-tree-linn, and it may be down to the Black-moss as soon as
Hannah Lee." So he called his two sheep dogs, that had taken their
place under the long table before the window, and set out, half in
joy, half in fear, to overtake Hannah and see her safely across the
Black-moss.
The snow began to drift so fast, that before he had reached the
head of the Glen, there was nothing to be seen but a little bit
of the wooden rail of the bridge across the Sauch burn. William
Grieve was the most active shepherd in a large pastoral parish--he
had often passed the night among the wintery hills for the sake
of a few sheep, and all the snow that had ever fell from Heaven,
would not have made him turn back when Hannah Lee was before him;
and as his terrified heart told him, in imminent danger of being
lost.--As he advanced, he felt that it was no longer a walk of love
or friendship, for which he had been glad of an excuse. Death stared
him in the face, and his young soul, now beginning to feel all the
passions of youth, was filled with phrenzy. He had seen Hannah
every day--at the fire-side--at work--in the kirk--on holydays--at
prayers--bringing supper to his aged parents--smiling and singing
about the house from morning till night. She had often brought his
own meal to him among the hills--and he now found, that though he
had never talked to her about love, except smilingly, and playfully,
that he loved her beyond father or mother, or his own soul. "I
will save thee, Hannah," he cried with a loud sob, "or lie down
beside thee in the snow--and we will die together in our youth."
A wild whistling wind went by him, and the snow-flakes whirled so
fiercely round his head, that he staggered on for a while in utter
blindness. He knew the path that Hannah must have taken, and went
forward shouting aloud, and stopping every twenty yards to listen
for a voice. He sent his well trained dogs over the snow in all
directions--repeating to them her name "Hannah Lee," that the dumb
animals might, in their sagacity, know for whom they were searching;
and as they looked up in his face, and set off to scour the moor,
he almost believed that they knew his meaning, (and it is probable
they did) and were eager to find in her bewilderment the kind maiden
by whose hand they had so often been fed. Often went they off into
the darkness, and as often returned, but their looks showed that
every quest had been in vain. Meanwhile the snow was of a fearful
depth, and falling without intermission or diminution. Had the young
shepherd been thus alone, walking across the moor on his ordinary
business, it is probable that he might have been alarmed for his own
safety--nay, that in spite of all his strength and agility, he might
have sunk down beneath the inclemency of the night and perished.
But now, the passion of his soul carried him with supernatural
strength along, and extricated him from wreath and pitfall. Still
there was no trace of poor Hannah Lee--and one of his dogs at last
came close to his feet, worn out entirely, and afraid to leave its
master--while the other was mute, and, as the shepherd thought,
probably unable to force its way out of some hollow or through some
floundering drift.--Then he all at once knew that Hannah Lee was
dead--and dashed himself down in the snow in a fit of passion.
It was the first time that the youth had ever been sorely tried--all
his hidden and unconscious love for the fair lost girl had flowed up
from the bottom of his heart--and at once the sole object which had
blessed his life and made him the happiest of the happy, was taken
away and cruelly destroyed--so that sullen, wrathful, baffled and
despairing, there he lay, cursing his existence, and in too great
agony to think of prayer. "God," he then thought, "has forsaken
me--and why should he think on me, when he suffers one so good and
beautiful as Hannah to be frozen to death." God thought both of
him and Hannah--and through his infinite mercy forgave the sinner
in his wild turbulence of passion. William Grieve had never gone
to bed without joining in prayer--and he revered the Sabbath-day
and kept it holy. Much is forgiven to the human heart by him who
so fearfully framed it; and God is not slow to pardon the love
which one human being bears to another, in his frailty--even though
that love forget or arraign his own unsleeping providence. His
voice has told us to love one another--and William loved Hannah
in simplicity, innocence, and truth. That she should perish, was
a thought so dreadful, that, in its agony God seemed a ruthless
being--"blow--blow--blow--and drift us up for ever--we cannot be far
asunder--O Hannah--Hannah--think ye not that the fearful God has
forsaken us?"
As the boy groaned these words passionately through his quivering
lips, there was a sudden lowness in the air, and he heard the
barking of his absent dog, while the one at his feet hurried off in
the direction of the sound, and soon loudly joined the cry. It was
not a bark of surprise--or anger--or fear--but of recognition and
love. William sprung up from his bed in the snow and with his heart
knocking at his bosom even to sickness, he rushed headlong through
the drifts, with a giant's strength, and fell down half dead with
joy and terror beside the body of Hannah Lee.
But he soon recovered from that fit, and lifting the cold corpse
in his arms, he kissed her lips, and her cheeks, and her forehead,
and her closed eyes, till, as he kept gazing on her face in utter
despair, her head fell back on his shoulder, and a long deep sigh
came from her inmost bosom.--"She is yet alive thank God!"--and as
that expression left his lips for the first time that night, he felt
a pang of remorse:" "I said, O God, that thou hadst forsaken us--I
am not worthy to be saved; but let not this maiden perish, for the
sake of her parents, who have no other child."
The distracted youth prayed to God with the same earnestness as if
he had been beseeching a fellow creature, in whose hand was the
power of life and of death. The presence of the Great Being was
felt by him in the dark and howling wild, and strength was imparted
to him as to a deliverer. He bore along the fair child in his
arms, even as if she had been a lamb. The snow drift blew not--the
wind fell dead--a sort of glimmer, like that of an upbreaking and
departing storm, gathered about him--his dogs barked and jumped,
and burrowed joyfully in the snow--and the youth, strong in sudden
hope, exclaimed, "With the blessing of God, who has not deserted us
in our sore distress, will I carry thee, Hannah, in my arms, and lay
thee down alive in the house of thy father."--At this moment there
were no stars in Heaven, but she opened her dim blue eyes upon him
on whose bosom she was unconsciously lying, and said, as in a dream,
"Send the riband that ties up my hair, as a keepsake to William
Grieve." "She thinks that she is on her death bed, and forgets not
the son of her master. It is the voice of God that tells me she will
not now die, and that, under His grace, I shall be her deliverer."
The short lived rage of the storm was soon over, and William could
attend to the beloved being on his bosom. The warmth of his heart
seemed to infuse life into her's; and as he gently placed her feet
on the snow, till he muffled her up in his plaid, as well as in her
own, she made an effort to stand, and with extreme perplexity and
bewilderment, faintly inquired, where she was, and what fearful
catastrophe had befallen them? She was, however, too weak to walk;
and as her young master carried her along, she murmured, "O William!
what if my father be in the moor?--For if you, who need care so
little about me, have come hither, as I suppose to save my life, you
may be sure that my father sat not within doors during the storm."
As she spoke it was calm below, but the wind was still alive in
the upper air, and cloud, rack, mist, and sleet, were all driving
about in the sky. Out shone for a moment the pallid and ghostly
moon, through a rent in the gloom, and by that uncertain light, came
staggering forward the figure of a man.--"Father--Father," cried
Hannah--and his gray hairs were already on her cheek. The barking
of the dogs and the shouting of the young shepherd had struck his
ear, as the sleep of death was stealing over him, and with the last
effort of benumbed nature, he had roused himself from that fatal
torpor and prest through the snow wreath that had separated him from
his child. As yet they knew not of the danger each had endured--but
each judged of the other's suffering from their own, and father and
daughter regarded one another as creatures rescued, and hardly yet
rescued from death.
But a few minutes ago, and the three human beings who loved each
other so well, and now feared not to cross the Moor in safety, were,
as they thought, on their death beds. Deliverance now shone upon
them all like a gentle fire, dispelling that pleasant but deadly
drowsiness; and the old man was soon able to assist William Grieve
in leading Hannah along through the snow. Her colour and her warmth
returned, and her lover--for so might he well now be called--felt
her heart gently beating against her side. Filled as that heart was
with gratitude to God, joy in her deliverance, love to her father,
and purest affection for her master's son, never before had the
innocent maiden known what was happiness--and never more was she
to forget it. The night was now almost calm, and fast returning
to its former beauty--when the party saw the first twinkle of the
fire through the low window of the Cottage of the Moor. They soon
were at the garden gate--and to relieve the heart of the wife and
mother within, they talked loudly and cheerfully--naming each other
familiarly, and laughing between, like persons who had known neither
danger nor distress.
No voice answered from within--no footsteps came to the door which
stood open, as when the father had left it in his fear, and now he
thought with affright, that his wife, feeble as she was, had been
unable to support the loneliness, and had followed him out into the
night, never to be brought home alive.--As they bore Hannah into
the house, his fear gave way to worse, for there upon the hard clay
floor lay the mother upon her face, as if murdered by some savage
blow. She was in the same deadly swoon into which she had fallen on
her husband's departure, three hours before. The old man raised her
up, and her pulse was still--so was her heart--her face pale and
sunken--and her body cold as ice. "I have recovered a daughter,"
said the old man, "but I have lost a wife;" and he carried her,
with a groan, to the bed on which he laid her lifeless body. The
sight was too much for Hannah, worn out as she was, and who had
hitherto been able to support herself in the delightful expectation
of gladdening her mother's heart by her safe arrival. She, too, now
swooned away, and, as she was placed on the bed beside her mother,
it seemed, indeed that death, disappointed of his prey on the wild
moor, had seized it in the cottage, and by the fire-side. The
husband knelt down by the bed-side, and held his wife's icy hand in
his, while William Grieve appalled, and awe-stricken, hung over his
Hannah, and inwardly implored God that the night's wild adventure
might not have so ghastly an end. But Hannah's young heart soon
began once more to beat--and soon as she came to her recollection,
she rose up with a face whiter than ashes, and free from all
smiles, as if none had ever played there, and joined her father and
young master in their efforts to restore her mother to life.
It was the mercy of God that had struck her down to the earth,
insensible to the shrieking winds, and the fears that would
otherwise have killed her. Three hours of that wild storm had passed
over her head, and she heard nothing more than if she had been
asleep in a breathless night of the summer dew. Not even a dream
had touched her brain, and when she opened her eyes which, as she
thought had been but a moment shut, she had scarcely time to recal
to her recollection the image of her husband rushing out into the
storm, and of a daughter therein lost, till she beheld that very
husband kneeling tenderly by her bed-side, and that very daughter
smoothing the pillow on which her aching temples reclined. But she
knew from the white steadfast countenances before her that there
had been tribulation and deliverance, and she looked on the beloved
beings ministering by her bed, as more fearfully dear to her from
the unimagined danger from which she felt assured they had been
rescued by the arm of the Almighty.
There is little need to speak of returning recollection, and
returning strength. They had all now power to weep, and power to
pray. The Bible had been lying in its place ready for worship--and
the father read aloud that chapter in which is narrated our
Saviour's act of miraculous power, by which he saved Peter from
the sea. Soon as the solemn thoughts awakened by that act of mercy
so similar to that which had rescued themselves from death had
subsided, and they had all risen up from prayer, they gathered
themselves in gratitude round the little table which had stood
so many hours spread--and exhausted nature was strengthened
and restored by a frugal and simple meal partaken of in silent
thankfulness.
The whole story of the night was then calmly recited--and when the
mother heard how the stripling had followed her sweet Hannah into
the storm, and borne her in his arms through a hundred drifted
heaps--and then looked upon her in her pride, so young, so innocent,
and so beautiful, she knew, that were the child indeed to become an
orphan, there was one, who, if there was either trust in nature, or
truth in religion, would guard and cherish her all the days of her
life.