The circumstances I am about to relate to you have truth to recommend
them. They happened to myself, and my recollection of them is as vivid
as if they had taken place only yesterday. Twenty years, however, have
gone by since that night. During those twenty years I have told the
story to but one other person. I tell it now with a reluctance which I
find it difficult to overcome. All I entreat, meanwhile, is that you
will abstain from forcing your own conclusions upon me. I want nothing
explained away. I desire no arguments. My mind on this subject is
quite made up, and, having the testimony of my own senses to rely
upon, I prefer to abide by it.

Well! It was just twenty years ago, and within a day or two of the end
of the grouse season. I had been out all day with my gun, and had had
no sport to speak of. The wind was due east; the month, December; the
place, a bleak wide moor in the far north of England. And I had lost
my way. It was not a pleasant place in which to lose one's way, with
the first feathery flakes of a coming snowstorm just fluttering down
upon the heather, and the leaden evening closing in all around. I
shaded my eyes with my hand, and staled anxiously into the gathering
darkness, where the purple moorland melted into a range of low hills,
some ten or twelve miles distant. Not the faintest smoke-wreath, not
the tiniest cultivated patch, or fence, or sheep-track, met my eyes in
any direction. There was nothing for it but to walk on, and take my
chance of finding what shelter I could, by the way. So I shouldered my
gun again, and pushed wearily forward; for I had been on foot since an
hour after daybreak, and had eaten nothing since breakfast.

Meanwhile, the snow began to come down with ominous steadiness, and
the wind fell. After this, the cold became more intense, and the night
came rapidly up. As for me, my prospects darkened with the darkening
sky, and my heart grew heavy as I thought how my young wife was
already watching for me through the window of our little inn parlour,
and thought of all the suffering in store for her throughout this
weary night. We had been married four months, and, having spent our
autumn in the Highlands, were now lodging in a remote little village
situated just on the verge of the great English moorlands. We were
very much in love, and, of course, very happy. This morning, when we
parted, she had implored me to return before dusk, and I had promised
her that I would. What would I not have given to have kept my word!

Even now, weary as I was, I felt that with a supper, an hour's rest,
and a guide, I might still get back to her before midnight, if only
guide and shelter could be found.

And all this time, the snow fell and the night thickened. I stopped
and shouted every now and then, but my shouts seemed only to make the
silence deeper. Then a vague sense of uneasiness came upon me, and I
began to remember stories of travellers who had walked on and on in
the falling snow until, wearied out, they were fain to lie down and
sleep their lives away. Would it be possible, I asked myself, to keep
on thus through all the long dark night? Would there not come a time
when my limbs must fail, and my resolution give way? When I, too, must
sleep the sleep of death. Death! I shuddered. How hard to die just
now, when life lay all so bright before me! How hard for my darling,
whose whole loving heart but that thought was not to be borne! To
banish it, I shouted again, louder and longer, and then listened
eagerly. Was my shout answered, or did I only fancy that I heard a
far-off cry? I halloed again, and again the echo followed. Then a
wavering speck of light came suddenly out of the dark, shifting,
disappearing, growing momentarily nearer and brighter. Running towards
it at full speed, I found myself, to my great joy, face to face with
an old man and a lantern.

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