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Entered according to Act of Congress, in J ur.e, 1867, by J. W. Buukk A Cos., in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the So. District of Georgia.
Vol. I.
Condensed for Burke’s Weekly
LOST IN THE SNOW.
IIE father and mother of
Hannah Lee lived in a
small cottage on the
edge of a wide
Scottish moori
» several miles distant from
any other dwelling. Like
the children of most poor
people in that country, she
labored hard all the week, at a
neighboring house, going homo
at the close of the week.
One cold Saturday night in
mid-winter, she left her master’s
house as soon as the rim of the
great moon made its appearance
above the horizon; and, all by
herself, she tripped along be
neath the beauties of the silent
heavens.
As she traveled onwards she
sang to herself a song, a hymn,
or a psalm, and ever and anon
she stopped to try to count the
stars that lay in some more beau
tiful part of the sky, or gazed on
the constellations that she knew,
and called them, in her joy, by
the names they bore among the
shepherds.
And, as she stepped along she
thought of her own little fireside,
and of her old parents waiting for her,
while the snow-diamonds glittered around
her feet, and the frost wove a wreath of
shining pearls round her forehead. As
she reached the eda;e of the Black-Moss,
which lav half way between her masters
and her father’s dwelling, she heard a
loud noise coming down the valley, and
in a few seconds she feit on her face some
flakes of snow.
‘She looked up the valley, and saw the
snow storm coming down, fast as a flood.
MACON, G-A., JANUARY ‘24, 1868.
Many of our little readers have never seen
a snow storm, and cannot appreciate the
situation of Hannah. But she was accus
tomed to such things, and felt no fear,
although she ceased her song, and stepped
on more rapidly, feeling bolder and bold-
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eras she neared her father’s dwelling.
But the snow storm was now upon her,
the light of the moon was swallowed up,
and the child was in utter darkness. She
saw nothing but the flakes of snow, which
filled the air, and heard nothing but the
wild, fierce howl of the winter’s wind.
The cold became terrible, and her little
hands and feet were fast being benumbed
past feeling,
“ W[hat will become of the poor sheep?”
she thought, but she scarcely thought of
her own danger. At last she could no
longer see -a single mark on t the snow,
and suddenly, too, she felt out of breath
and exhausted, and bursting into tears
she sank down in the snow, saying: “ I
will repeat the Lord’s Prayer,” and draw-
ing her plaid more closely around
her, she whispered : “ Our Father
who art in Heaven, hallow T ed be
Thy name; Thy kingdom come;
Thy will be done on earth as it
is in Heaven.”
Having prayed to her Father
in Heaven, she thought next of
her father on earth. Alas, they
were not far apart. He, having
set out to find his child, had sunk
down, exhausted, on the drifting
snow, and they were lying with
in a stone’s throw of each other,
while a huge snow-drift was ev
ery moment piling itself up be
tween the dying father and his
dying child.
At the first appearance of the
storm, William Grieve, the son of
Hannah’s master, called his two
sheep dogs, and set out, half in
joy, half in fear, to overtake Han
nah, and to see her safely across
the moor. The snow T began to
drift so fast that before he reach
ed the head of the glen, there was
nothing to be seen but a little
bit of the wooden rail of the
bridge across the stream. It was a wfild
night, but all the snow that ever fell
would not have made him turn back when
Hannah Lee was in such imminent dan
ger of being lost. He knew the path
that she must have taken, and went for
ward, shouting aloud, and stopping every
twenty yards to listen for her voice. He
sent his well-trained dogs over the snow,
in every direction, repeating to them her
name, that they might know for whom
they were hunting. Often they went out
No. 30