Furnivall got up and looked, trembling all
over--and she was nowhere there; then we set off again, every one in
the house, and looked in all the places we had searched before, but we
could not find her. Miss Furnivall shivered and shook so much, that
Mrs. Stark took her back into the warm drawing-room; but not before
they had made me promise to bring her to them when she was found.
Well-a-day! I began to think she never would be found, when I bethought
me to look into the great front court, all covered with snow. I was
upstairs when I looked out; but, it was such clear moonlight, I could
see, quite plain, two little footprints, which might be traced from the
hall-door and round the corner of the east wing. I don't know how I got
down, but I tugged open the great stiff hall-door, and, throwing the
skirt of my gown over my head for a cloak, I ran out. I turned the east
corner, and there a black shadow fell on the snow; but when I came
again into the moonlight, there were the little foot-marks going up--up
to the Fells. It was bitter cold; so cold, that the air almost took the
skin off my face as I ran; but I ran on crying to think how my poor
little darling must be perished and frightened. I was within sight of
the holly-trees, when I saw a shepherd coming down the hill, bearing
something in his arms wrapped in his maud. He shouted to me, and asked
me if I had lost a bairn; and, when I could not speak for crying, he
bore towards me, and I saw my wee bairnie, lying still, and white, and
stiff in his arms, as if she had been dead. He told me he had been up
the Fells to gather in his sheep, before the deep cold of night came
on, and that under the holly-trees (black marks on the hill-side, where
no other bush was for miles around) he had found my little lady--my
lamb--my queen--my darling--stiff and cold in the terrible sleep which
is frost-begotten. Oh! the joy and the tears of having her in my arms
once again! for I would not let him carry her; but took her, maud and
all, into my own arms, and held her near my own warm neck and heart,
and felt the life stealing slowly back again into her little gentle
limbs. But she was still insensible when we reached the hall, and I had
no breath for speech. We went in by the kitchen-door.

'Bring me the warming-pan,' said I; and I carried her upstairs and
began undressing her by the nursery fire, which Bessy had kept up. I
called my little lammie all the sweet and playful names I could t