“I don’t know,” Dick answered; “but there will be plenty of time to think of that in the morning. I think Jimmy is all right, Tom; I have just put my hand inside his waistcoat and he feels quite warm now. Say your prayers, and then let us try to get off to sleep.”
This they were not very long in doing, for the air in the little hut was soon heated by the action of their bodies. Outside the storm was still raging, and the wind, laden with swirling snow from the uplands, was piling it high in the valleys. Already the hut was covered and the wall behind it.
All night and all next day the snow continued to fall; the next day, and the next, it kept on. Old folks down in Castleton said they never remembered such a storm. It lay three feet deep in the fields, and there was no saying how deep the drifts might be in the hollows. For the first two days the wind had tried its best to keep the hills clear, but it had tired of the work, and for the last two had ceased to blow, and the great feathered flakes formed steadily and silently.
Tom was the first to wake.
“Holloa!” he exclaimed, “where are we? Oh! I remember. Dick, are you awake?”
“Yes, I am awake now,” Dick said. “What is it? It is not morning yet. I seem to have been asleep a long time, and don’t my bones just ache? Jimmy, old boy, are you all right?”
“Yes,” Jimmy grunted.
“It is quite warm,” Dick said. “It feels very close, and how still it is! The wind has quite gone down. Do you know, Tom, I think it must be morning. There seems a faint sort of light. I can see the stones in the wall behind you.”
“So it must,” Tom assented. “Oh! how stifling it is!” and he raised himself into a sitting position.
“I am afraid we are buried deep in the snow-drift. Put your hand up, Tom; don’t you feel some of these sticks are bent in the middle?”