“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—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.”
“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.
“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 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 wildfowl. 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 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 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 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.