Chapter 3

The searching party, reinforced by most of the able-bodied men in Ratlinghope, beat that part of the hill lying between Ratlinghope and Wolstaston thoroughly, thinking that I must be somewhere in the tract between the two places, never supposing that I could have wandered as far away as I actually had done. The fog was so thick that it was only by keeping near to each other and shouting constantly that this party was able to keep together. I need not say that they failed to discover any trace of me, and about three o'clock in the afternoon, worn out and exhausted, they returned to the Rectory with the worst tidings. "He must be dead," they said, "he must _be_ dead; it is not possible that any human creature could have lived through such a night." And it was upon the receipt of these tidings that the letters were sent off which I so fortunately succeeded in stopping. Half-an-hour after, the news came that I was returning, and in another half-hour I was at home. This was between four and five o'clock in the afternoon, rather more than twenty- seven hours from the time I had left Wolstaston.

My friends tell me that had they not known who it was, they would scarcely have recognised me. Dressed in another man's clothes, exceedingly thin, with eyes fearfully bloodshot, and fingers stiff and shrunken, the middle finger more resembling a dead stick, they say, with the gray and wrinkled bark on, than the living member of a human body, this is scarcely to be wondered at. I was glad to go to bed at once, and to have my feet and hands well rubbed with snow. This, it should be well known, is the only thing to be done in cases of frost bite. Had I put them in hot water, I should in all probability have lost my fingers and toes; they would have sloughed off. I know of several cases where this has happened; indeed, I heard of one quite lately, for the gardener of a friend of mine in Warwickshire had his hands frost-bitten while throwing the snow off the roof of a house during this last winter, and injudiciously putting them into hot water, the result has been that he has lost the ends of all his fingers, to the first joint. In my case, I am thankful to say I knew better than to do this, and by the use of cold water and continued friction have succeeded in restoring my hands in a great measure. They have still not nearly as much sensation in them as before, but this will return with time. During the last few weeks, gorse pricks have been working out of my hands and feet and legs by hundreds, though at first, from the numbness of the skin, I was quite unconscious of them. It is not to be wondered at that I should have picked these up in great numbers whilst walking through the gorse bushes without my boots, and clutching at them as I fell in hopes of saving myself.

Such are the details of my "Night in the Snow," and my most wonderful preservation through it and the following day. I trust that no one who may chance to read these pages will ever be placed in a similar position; but should it so happen, I hope that the remembrance of my adventure will occur to them; for surely it teaches, as plainly as anything can, that even in the most adverse circumstances no one need ever despair; and shows how an individual of no unusual physical powers may, by God's help, resist the overwhelming temptation to sleep which is usually so fatal to those who are lost in the snow.

LORIMER AND CHALMERS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.