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In summer there is beauty
in the wildest moors of Scotland, and the wayfaring man who sits down
for an hour’s rest beside some little spring that flows unheard through
the brightened moss and water-cresses, feels his weary heart revived by
the silent, serene, and solitary prospect. On every side sweet sunny
spots of verdure smile towards him from among the melancholy heather ;
unexpectedly in the solitude a stray sheep, it may be with its lambs,
starts half-alarmed at his motionless figure; insects, large, bright,
and beautiful, come careering by him through the desert air; nor does
the wild want its own songsters,—the gray linnet, fond of the blooming
furze, and now and then the lark mounting up to heaven above the summits
of the green pastoral hills. During such a sunshiny hour, the lonely
cottage on the waste seems to stand in a paradise; and as he rises to
pursue his journey, the traveller looks back and blesses it with a
mingled emotion of delight and envy. There, thinks he, abide the
children of Innocence and Contentment, the two most benign spirits that
watch over human life.
But other thoughts arise in the mind of him
who may chance to journey through the same scene in the desolation of
winter. The cold bleak sky girdles the moor as with a belt of ice—life
is frozen in air and on earth. The silence is not of repose but
extinction; and should a solitary human dwelling catch his eye, half
buried in the snow, he is sad for the sake of them whose destiny it is
to abide far from the cheerful haunts of men, shrouded up in melancholy,
by poverty held in thrall, or pining away in unvisited and untended
disease.
But, in good truth, the
heart of human life is but imperfectly discovered from its countenance;
and before we can know what the summer or what the winter yields for
enjoyment or trial to our country’s peasantry, we must have conversed
with them in their fields and by their firesides, and made ourselves
acquainted with the powerful ministry of the seasons, not over those
objects alone that feed the eye and the imagination, but over all the
incidents, occupations, and events, that modify or constitute the
existence of the poor.
I have a short and simple story to tell of
the winter life of the moorland cottager—a story but of one evening—with
few events and no single catastrophe—which may haply please those hearts
whose delight it is to think on the humble underplots that are carrying
on in the great drama of life.
Two cottagers, husband and wife, were
sitting by their cheerful peat-fire one winter evening, in a small
lonely hut on the edge of a wide moor, at some miles’ distance from any
other habitation. There had been, at one time, several huts of the same
kind erected close together, and inhabited by families of the poorest
class of day-labourers, who found work among the distant farms, and at
night returned to dwellings which were rent-free, with their little
gardens won from the waste. But one family after another had dwindled
away, and the turf—built huts had all fallen into ruins, except one that
had always stood in the centre of this little solitary village, with its
summer-walls covered with the richest honeysuckles, and in the midst of
the brightest of all the gardens. It alone now sent up its smoke into
the clear winter sky—and its little end window, now lighted up, was the
only ground-star that shone towards the belated traveller, if any such
ventured to cross, on a winter night, a scene so dreary and desolate.
The affairs of the small household were all arranged for the night. The
little rough pony, that had drawn in a sledge, from the heart of the
Black-moss, the fuel by whose blaze the cottars were now sitting
cheerily, and the little Highland cow, whose milk enabled them to live,
were standing amicably together, under cover of a rude shed, of which
one side was formed by the peat-stack, and which was at once byre, and
stable, and hen-roost. Within, the clock ticked cheerfully as the
fire-light reached its old oak-wood case, across the yellow-sanded
floor; and a small round table stood between, covered with a snow-white
cloth, on which were milk and oat-cakes, the morning. mid-day, and
evening meal of these frugal and contented cottars. The spades and the
mattocks of the labourer were collected into one corner, and showed that
the succeeding day was the blessed Sabbath; While on the wooden
chimney-piece was seen lying an open Bible ready for family worship.
The father and the mother were sitting
together without opening their lips, but with their hearts overflowing
with happiness, for on this Saturday night they were, every minute,
expecting to hear at the latch the hand of their only daughter, a maiden
of about fifteen years, who was at service with a farmer over the hills.
This dutiful child was, as they knew, to bring home to them "her sair-won
penny fee," a pittance which, in the beauty of her girlhood, she earned
singing at her work, and which, in the benignity of that sinless time,
she would pour with tears into the bosoms she so dearly loved. Forty
shillings a-year were all the wages of sweet Hannah Lee; but though she
wore at her labour a tortoise-shell comb in her auburn hair, and though
in the kirk none were more becomingly arrayed than she, one half at
least of her earnings were to be reserved for the holiest of all
purposes; and her kind, innocent heart was gladdened when she looked on
the little purse that was, on the long-expected Saturday night, to be
taken from her bosom, and put, with a blessing, into the hand of her
father, now growing old at his daily toils.
Of such a child the happy cottars were
thinking in their silence. And well, indeed, might they be called happy.
lt is at that sweet season that filial piety is most beautiful. Their
own Hannah had just outgrown the mere unthinking gladness of childhood,
but had not yet reached that time when inevitable selfishness mixes with
the pure current of love. She had begun to think on what her
affectionate heart had felt so long; and when she looked on the pale
face and bending frame of her mother, on the deepening wrinkles and
whitening hairs of her father, often would she lie weeping for their
sakes on her midnight bed, and wish that she were beside them as they
slept, that, she might kneel down and kiss them, and mention their names
over and over again in her prayer. The parents whom before she had only
loved, her expanding heart now also venerated. With gushing tenderness
was now mingled a holy fear and an awful reverence. She had discerned
the relation in which she, an only child, stood to her poor parents, now
that they were getting old, and there was not a passage in Scripture
that spake of parents or of children, from ]oseph sold into slavery to
Mary weeping below the Cross, that was not written, never to be
obliterated, on her uncorrupted heart.
The father rose from his seat, and went to
the door to look out into the night. The stars were in thousands, and
the full moon was risen. lt was almost light as day, and the snow, that
seemed encrusted with diamonds, was so hardened by the frost, that his
daughter’s homeward feet would leave no mark on its surface. He had been
toiling all day among the distant Castlewoods, and, stiff and wearied as
he now was, he was almost tempted to go to meet his child; but his
wife’s kind voice dissuaded him, and, returning to the fireside, they
began to talk of her whose image had been so long passing before them in
their silence. "She
is growing up to be a bonny lassie," said the mother; "her long and
weary attendance on me during my fever last spring kept her down a
while—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."
"Ay, Agnes," replied the father, "we are not
very old yet—though we are getting older—and a few years will bring her
to woman'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—l 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."
"Ay,—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 or 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
towards 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 sough 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 den in the sky. All the remote stars were obscured, and only
one or two were faintly seen in a sky that half an hour before was
perfectly cloudless, but that was now driving with rack, and mist, and
sleet, the whole atmosphere being in commotion. He stood for a single
moment to observe the direction of this unforeseen 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-stricken
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 sang 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 fireside—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 pony and the cow;—friends
all, and inmates of that happy household. So stepped she along, while
the snow diamonds glittered around her feet, and the frost wove a wreath
of lucid pearls round 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 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 parents’ 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.
"lt 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 aught evil befalling themselves, and, thinking
benignly of all living things, forget their own fear in their pity for
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 footprint 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.
lt was now that her heart began to quake
with fear. She remembered stories of shepherds lost in the snow, of a
mother and a 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 the thought of an over-ruling 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 perish
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 tire in the cottage, a white-spread table, and
beds prepared for the family to lie down in peace. Yet was she who sat
therein more to be pitied than the old man and the child stretched upon
the snow. "I will not go to seek them—that would he 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 pauses of her agony, remained clasped in her hands.
Hannah Lee had been a servant for l 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 setting 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 wintry hills for the sake of a
few sheep, and all the snow that 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
frenzy. He had seen Hannah every day—at the fireside—at work—in the kirk—on
holidays—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, 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 forwards 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—Oh, 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 sprang
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 disparting 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 in whose bosom she was unconsciously
lying, and said, as in a dream, "Send the ribbon that ties up my hair as
a keepsake to William Grieve." "She thinks that she is on her deathbed,
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 hers; 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 misfortune 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
pressed 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 sufferings 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 deathbeds. 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 his 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 footstep
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, this 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 fireside. The husband
knelt down by the bedside, 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 recall 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 bedside, 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. It was
not nine o’clock when the storm came down from Glen-Scrae upon the
Black-moss, and now in a pause of silence the clock struck twelve.
Within these three hours William and Hannah had led a life of trouble
and of joy, that had enlarged and kindled their hearts within them; and
they felt that henceforth they were to live wholly for each other’s
sakes. His love was the proud and exulting love of a deliverer, who,
under Providence, had saved from the frost and the snow, the innocence
and the beauty of which his young passionate heart had been so
desperately enamoured; and he now thought of his own Hannah Lee ever
more moving about in his father’s house, not as a servant, but as a
daughter—and, when some few happy years had gone by, his own most
beautiful and loving wife. The innocent maiden still called him her
young master, but was not ashamed of the holy affection which she now
knew that she had long felt for the fearless youth on whose bosom she
had thought herself dying in that cold and miserable moor. Her heart
leapt within her when she heard her parents bless him by his name; and
when he took her hand into his before them, and vowed before that Power
who had that night saved them from the snow, that Hannah Lee should ere
long be his wedded wife, she wept and sobbed as if her heart would break
in a fit of strange and insupportable happiness.
The young shepherd rose to bid them
farewell—"My father will think I am lost," said he, with a grave smile,
"and my Hannah’s mother knows what it is to fear for a child." So
nothing was said to detain him, and the family went with him to the
door. The skies smiled as serenely as if a storm had never swept before
the stars; the moon was sinking from her meridian, but in cloudless
splendour; and the hollow of the hills was hushed as that of heaven.
Danger there was none over the placid night-scene; the happy youth soon
crossed the Black-moss, now perfectly still; and, perhaps, just as he
was passing, with a shudder of gratitude, the very spot where his sweet
Hannah Lee had so nearly perished, she was lying down to sleep in her
innocence, or dreaming of one now dearer to her than all on earth but
her parents. |
