elf, she fell fast asleep.

Meantime Alec, his mother having gone to the town, was sitting alone,
finishing, by the light of the fire, the last of a story. At length the
dreariness of an ended tale was about him, and he felt the inactivity
to which he had been compelled all day no longer tolerable. He would go
and see how his snow-chamber looked by candlelight. His mother had told
him not to go out; but that, he reasoned, could hardly be called going
out, when there was not more than a yard of open air to cross. So he
got a candle, was out of the window in a moment, notwithstanding his
lameness, and crept through the long vault of snow towards the inmost
recess. As he approached the end he started. Could he believe his eyes?
A figure was there--motionless--dead perhaps. He went on--he went
in--and there he saw Annie, leaning against the white wall, with her
white face turned up to the frozen ceiling. She might have been the
frost-queen, the spirit that made the snow, and built the hut, and
dwelt in it; for all the powers that vivify nature must be children.
The popular imagination seems to have caught this truth, for all the
fairies and gnomes and goblins, yes, the great giants too, are only
different sizes, shapes, and characters of children. But I have
wandered from Alec's thoughts into my own. He knew it was Annie, and no
strange creature of the elements. And if he had not come, she might
have slept on till her sleep was too deep for any voice of the world to
rouse her.

It was, even then, with difficulty that he woke her. He took hold of
her hands, but she did not move. He sat down, took her in his arms,
spoke to her--got frightened and shook her, but she would not open her
eyes. Her long dark eyelashes sloped still upon her white cheek, like
the low branches of a cedar upon the lawn at its foot. But he knew she
was not dead yet, for he could feel her heart beating. At length she
lifted her eyelids, looked up in his face, gave a low happy laugh, like
the laugh of a dreaming child, and was fast asleep again in a moment.

Alec hesitated no longer. He rose with her in his arms, carried her
into the parlour, and laid her down on the rug before the fire, with a
sofa-pillow under her head. There she might have her sleep out. When
Mrs Forbes came home she found Alec reading, and Annie sleeping by the
fireside. Before his mother had recovered from her surprise, and while
she was yet staring at the lovely little apparition