A Night in the Snow | Page 9

the drifts were up nearly to my neck, when I heard what I had thought never to hear again--the blessed sound of human voices, children's voices, talking and laughing, and apparently sliding not very far off. I called to them with all my might, but judge of my dismay when sudden and total silence took the place of the merry voices I had so lately heard! I shouted again and again, and said that I was lost, but there was no reply. It was a bitter disappointment, something like that of the sailor shipwrecked on a desert island, who sees a sail approaching and thinks that he is saved, when as he gazes the vessel shifts her course and disappears on the horizon, dashing his hopes to the ground. It appeared, as I learned afterwards, that these children saw me, though I could not see them, and ran away terrified at my unearthly aspect. Doubtless the head of a man protruding from a deep snow drift, crowned and bearded with ice like a ghastly emblem of winter, was a sight to cause a panic among children, and one cannot wonder that they ran off to communicate the news that "there was the bogie in the snow." Happily, however, for the bogie, he had noticed the direction from which these voices came, and struggling forward again, I soon found myself sufficiently near to the Carding Mill to recognise the place, blind as I was. A little girl now ventured to approach me, as, true to the instincts of her nature, the idea dawned upon her that I was no goblin of the mountains, no disagreeable thing from a world beneath popped up through the snow, but a real fellow-creature in distress. I spoke to her and told her that I was the clergyman of Ratlinghope, and had been lost in the snow on the hill all night. As she did not answer at once, I suppose she was taking a careful observation of me, for after a few moments she said, "Why, you look like Mr. Carr of Wolstaston." "I am Mr. Carr," I replied; whereupon the boys, who had previously run away, and, as I imagine, taken refuge behind the girl, came forward and helped me on to the little hamlet, only a few yards distant, where some half dozen cottages are clustered together round the Carding Mill.
I was saved, at any rate, from immediate peril, though I fully expected that serious illness must follow from my violent exertions and long exposure. I was saved at all events from the death of lonely horror against which I had wrestled so many hours in mortal conflict, and scarcely knew how to believe that I was once more among my fellow-men, under a kindly, hospitable roof. God's hand had led me thither. No wisdom or power of my own could have availed for my deliverance, when once my sight was so much gone. The Good Shepherd had literally, in very deed, led the blind by a way that he knew not to a refuge of safety and peace.
The good kind people at the Carding Mill, you may be sure, soon gathered round me in sympathising wonder, and I was quickly supplied with such comforts as they could give. I told them that I had had scarcely anything to eat since breakfast the day before (as I had been too much hurried to eat my luncheon before starting to Ratlinghope), and so tea and bread and butter were at once provided. The former was very grateful, but I could hardly eat the latter, as all feeling of hunger had left me. The good people were much shocked to find that I could not pick up a piece of bread and butter for myself, as I could neither feel it nor see it; I believe they thought my sight was hopelessly gone. I was, however, under no uneasiness myself on this score, as I was perfectly familiar with snow blindness, having seen cases of it in Switzerland, and knew that in all probability my eyes would get quite right again in a week's time, as it turned out that they did. They also discovered that the middle finger of my right hand was terribly lacerated, and that the skin was completely stripped off the back of it. This I knew to be a much more serious affair, as the frost had evidently got fast hold of it, and I thought it very likely that I should lose it. This, however, seemed a very trifling matter to me then. Had it been my right arm I should have thought nothing of it, after so marvellous an escape. I was provided at the Carding Mill with a hat, boots, and dry stockings; and having rested about