Miles clasped his hands: "Oh, Father of the repentant prodigal! If thou canst part the thick clouds like that, and give light, wilt thou not give me light in my soul, and show me the way I should go?" He repeated over to himself "the way—the way," when suddenly there darted into his bewildered mind the luminous words, "I am the way, the truth; and the life. No man cometh unto the Father, but by me."
Miles crept to his bedside, and dropped down on his knees in the very place where he used to pray his little prayers when he was yet a little child; and, like a little child, he clasped his hands, and prayed the simple prayers of his childhood. He even remembered every word of the hymn with which his mother used to sing him to sleep, and he repeated that too. Miles continued long on his knees, and when he gently rose and went to the window, it was not with the "exceeding bitter cry" with which he had last sprung to his feet, but with the words, whispered as if he could "scarce believe for joy and wonder":
"Hast thou indeed found me, O my Saviour?"
The moon was now shining steadily upon the scene, and the snow had ceased falling; but it lay so deep upon all around, that the usual tracks were obliterated.
"Nevertheless I must go," said he, firmly, in answer to the remonstrances of thought; "Bella must be saved at any cost from this wicked wrong; and I must tell these men that I have done with them forever, but that I will not inform against them if they will only give up the bad line they are in, and leave the neighborhood."
He opened the door, and listened: all was quiet, except that the clock ticked on the stairs in its own measured way, and he started when it struck three, as he glided past it with shoeless feet. He found his black-and-white shepherd's plaid wrapper hanging on the pin in the kitchen, and he threw it around him in the approved mountain fashion, whereby it forms a good protection for chest and shoulders, while sufficient freedom is left for the arms. He then put on a stout pair of boots, drew on his warm worsted gloves, tied Alice's "comforter" round his neck, and taking his stout staff, opened the door.
The porch was floored with snow: the walk was a shining sheet of white: Alice's pet plants were buried, or else feathered into white and drooping plumes: the brother yews were bending under masses of snow: the little wicket stood like bars of alabaster before him; and rather than break the shining spell, he vaulted lightly over it.
He passed through the farm-yard, and his favorite young horse whinnied when he heard his master's step, muffled thought it was by the deadening snows. Laddie sprang to his side, but was waved off; Chance did not appear, yet all the while he was watching and lurking about behind corners, and under walls; for he had settled it in his faithful mind that go he would, whatever orders he received to the contrary. He did not like the look of the man who had been whistling and whispering under the window, and he did not like the snow; and therefore if danger were abroad, wherever his master was, there would his faithful servant be.
Miles was quite unconscious of this mute resolve, and of its answering movements, but plodded heavily on along the white lane, and across the white fields in the well-known direction of Green Gap. As he approached the narrow gateway into the glen, he found that the snow forced through the narrow pass by the driving wind of the previous evening, had been whirled about in wild eddies, and had then settled into fantastic wreaths, or gathered into smooth and sloping banks, as the accidents of the ground or the impulse of the gale had determined. Onward, however, he forced his way, until he was startled to see that, in the very jaws of the Gap white walls rose above his head, here eight, then ten, now twelve feet high, sometimes smooth as Parian marble; at others, crested like a breaking wave. What if that curling and foaming billow should suddenly bend, break, and engulf him? What if the treacherous wind should blow a blast against that mountain surge, and shiver it into showers of frozen spray? He stops and looks up. The moon is shining coldly upon the glistening crags; and there, gleaming through the Gap, rises the Old Man, with a white sheet thrown over his lofty forehead, enwrapping his broad shoulders, and lying in glittering folds about his feet.
The scene was magnificent in its wintry grandeur; but it was appalling to the young man's mind. How was he to force his lonely way up the gorge to Scarf Beck? He clasped his cold hands and breathed a prayer for guidance; "Leave me not, neither forsake me; show me the way in which thou would'st have me to walk, outwardly as well as inwardly, through the snows and through the snares. Guide me by thine eye: uphold me with thy hand. I look unto thee to save me, for thou art my God." These, and other little fragments of broken prayer, little snatches of precious psalms, little bits of remembered teachings, came thrilling through his bewildered mind.