into a hole, and feeling as if she were going to sleep in bed, yet knowing it was death; and thinking how much sweeter it was than sleep.  Hugh’s account was very strange and defective, but he was never able to add anything to it.  He said that, when he rushed out into the dark, the storm seized him like a fury, beating him about the head and face with icy wings, till he was almost stunned.  He took the road to the farm, which lay through the fir-wood; but he soon became aware that he had lost his way and might tramp about in the fir-wood till daylight, if he lived as long.  Then, thinking of Margaret, he lost his presence of mind, and rushed wildly along.  He thought he must have knocked his head against the trunk of a tree, but he could not tell; for he remembered nothing more but that he found himself dragging Margaret, with his arms round her, through the snow, and nearing the light in the cottage-window.  Where or how he had found her, or what the light was that he was approaching, he had not the least idea.  He had only a vague notion that he was rescuing Margaret from something dreadful.  Margaret, for her part, had no recollection of reaching the fir-wood, and as, long before morning, all traces were obliterated, the facts remained a mystery.  Janet thought that David had some wonderful persuasion about it; but he was never heard even to speculate on the subject.  Certain it was, that Hugh had saved Margaret’s life.  He seemed quite well next day, for he was of a very powerful and enduring frame for his years.  She recovered more slowly, and perhaps never altogether overcame the effects of Death’s embrace that night.  From the moment when Margaret was brought home, the storm gradually died away, and by the morning all was still; but many starry and moonlit nights glimmered and passed, before that snow was melted away from the earth; and many a night Janet awoke from her sleep with a cry, thinking she heard her daughter moaning, deep in the smooth ocean of snow, and could not find where she lay.

The occurrences of this dreadful night could not lessen the interest his cottage friends felt in Hugh; and a long winter passed with daily and lengthening communion both in study and in general conversation.  I fear some of my younger readers will think my story slow; and say:  “What! are they not going to fall in love with each other yet?  We have been expecting it ever so long.”  I have two answers to make to this.  The first is:  “I do not pretend to know so much about love as you—­excuse me—­think you do; and must confess, I do not know whether they were in love with each other or not.”  The second is:  “That I dare not pretend to understand thoroughly such a sacred mystery as the heart of Margaret; and I should feel it rather worse than presumptuous to talk as if I did.  Even Hugh’s is known to me only by gleams of light thrown, now and then, and here and there, upon it.”  Perhaps the two answers are only the same answer in different shapes.