There is little need to speak of returning recollection and returning strength. They had all now power to weep and power to pray. The Bible had been lying in its place ready for worship; and the father read aloud that chapter in which is narrated our Saviour’s act of miraculous power, by which he saved Peter from the sea. Soon as the solemn thoughts awakened by that act of mercy, so similar to that which had rescued themselves from death, had subsided, and they had all risen from prayer, they gathered themselves in gratitude around the little table which had stood so many hours spread; and exhausted nature was strengthened and restored by a frugal and simple meal partaken of in silent thankfulness. The whole story of the night was then recited; and when the mother heard how the stripling had followed her sweet Hannah into the storm, and borne her in his arms through a hundred drifted heaps,——and then looked upon her in her pride, so young, so innocent, and so beautiful, she knew that, were the child indeed to become an orphan, there was one who, if there was either trust in nature or truth in religion, would guard and cherish her all the days of her life. It was not nine o’clock when the storm came down from Glen Scrae upon the Black-moss, and now in a pause of silence the clock struck twelve. Within these three hours William and Hannah had led a life of trouble and of joy, that had enlarged and kindled their hearts within them, and they felt that henceforth they were to live wholly for each other’s sake. His love was the proud and exulting love of a deliverer who, under Providence, had saved from the frost and the snow, the innocence and the beauty of which his young passionate heart had been so desperately enamored; and he now thought of his own Hannah Lee evermore moving about his father’s house, not as a servant, but as a daughter; and when some few happy years had gone by his own most beautiful and most loving wife. The innocent maiden still called him her young master, but was not ashamed of the holy affection which she now knew that she had long felt for the fearless youth on whose bosom she had thought herself dying in that cold and miserable moor. Her heart leaped within her when she heard her parents bless him by his name; and when he took her hand into his before them, and vowed before that Power who had that night saved them from the snow, that Hannah Lee should erelong be his wedded wife, she wept and sobbed as if her heart would break in a fit of strange and insupportable happiness.