od
light, the traveller was guided by the sight of distant objects,--a piece
of rock,--a fall in the ground--which were quite invisible to me now. I
plucked up a brave heart, however, and took what seemed to me the right
road. It was wrong, nevertheless, and led me whither I knew not, but to
some wild boggy moor where the solitude seemed painful, intense, as if
never footfall of man had come thither to break the silence. I tried to
shout--with the dimmest possible hope of being heard--rather to reassure
myself by the sound of my own voice; but my voice came husky and short,
and yet it dismayed me; it seemed so weird and strange, in that noiseless
expanse of black darkness. Suddenly the air was filled thick with dusky
flakes, my face and hands were wet with snow. It cut me off from the
slightest knowledge of where I was, for I lost every idea of the
direction from which I had come, so that I could not even retrace my
steps; it hemmed me in, thicker, thicker, with a darkness that might be
felt. The boggy soil on which I stood quaked under me if I remained long
in one place, and yet I dared not move far. All my youthful hardiness
seemed to leave me at once. I was on the point of crying, and only very
shame seemed to keep it down. To save myself from shedding tears, I
shouted--terrible, wild shouts for bare life they were. I turned sick as
I paused to listen; no answering sound came but the unfeeling echoes.
Only the noiseless, pitiless snow kept falling thicker, thicker--faster,
faster! I was growing numb and sleepy. I tried to move about, but I
dared not go far, for fear of the precipices which, I knew, abounded in
certain places on the Fells. Now and then, I stood still and shouted
again; but my voice was getting choked with tears, as I thought of the
desolate helpless death I was to die, and how little they at home,
sitting round the warm, red, bright fire, wotted what was become of
me,--and how my poor father would grieve for me--it would surely kill
him--it would break his heart, poor old man! Aunt Fanny too--was this to
be the end of all her cares for me? I began to review my life in a
strange kind of vivid dream, in which the various scenes of my few boyish
years passed before me like visions. In a pang of agony, caused by such
remembrance of my short life, I gathered up my strength and called out
once more, a long, despairing, wailing cry, to which I had no hope of
obtaining any answer, save from the