oad, and where I was to leave the
fly, and, as I hoped, ride home.

The Post Office is at Leebotwood, and having given orders there that any
letters coming from my house should be stopped, I was helped on my horse,
and, accompanied by the man, began to ascend the hill. I had not gone a
hundred yards, when it became evident that it would be impossible to ride
far, and that I should be obliged to walk again, so the horse was sent
back to Leebotwood by a man whom we met, and I started again on my own
feet. Just at this time we met another man coming down over the fields
from Wolstaston. He had letters with him to post; those letters were
from my home. They were to say that I had been lost in the snow storm,
that every effort had been made to find me, that they had proved
fruitless, and that there was no hope left. I sent this messenger back
again pretty quickly, and told him to go home as fast as he could and say
I was coming. This news reached the village about half an hour before I
could get up there myself, and as may be supposed there was great
rejoicing. So completely had all hope of my safety been given up, that
to my people it seemed almost like a resurrection from the dead.

They had made the greatest efforts to find me. Twice a party had gone up
the hill on the Sunday night to the limit of the enclosed ground, and
stayed there calling and shouting, till, as one of them said to me, they
felt that if they had stayed there another ten minutes, they would have
been frozen to death. The second time they went up that night, they
actually got on to the open moorland some two or three hundred yards, but
here they were in imminent danger of being lost themselves. One of them
indeed declared that he could not return, and would have been lost had
not his companions insisted on his struggling back with them. Human
effort could do no more, and they made their toilsome way home prostrated
with fatigue.

It was a fearful moment, they tell me, when the Rectory house was closed
up for the night, the shutters fastened, and curtains drawn, with the
fate of its master unknown. The helpless watchers could only wait and
count the weary hours, keeping food hot for the wanderer, who they feared
would never return, and unable till the morning to plan any further
efforts for his rescue. The awful wind raged on, sometimes assuming to
the ears of the excited listeners the sound of rolling wheels and horses'
feet, startling the