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 fire 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 be 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 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 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-lin, 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.