CONCLUSION.
Lead kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,Lead Thou me on.The night is dark, and I am far from home,Lead Thou me on.
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, tillThe night is gone,And with the morn those angel faces smile,Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.
On the following morning Wandering Willie was astir betimes. He was bound for the farm-house where dwelt Roger's father—a good step, as he said to Lois, across the hills.
It was not snowing when he started. The morning clouds were even touched with red, but there were others hanging low down, grey clouds with wind-frayed edges, that looked heavy still with snow.
Lois went with the old man as far as the gate, over the path, where already, people coming and going, had beaten a track across the snow. There she parted from him.
'It makes me sad to see you going away alone,' she said, leaning over the gate, which he had already passed through, and holding his hand across it.
'It is good to be alone,' said Willie, quietly.
'But the journey will be so long—so toilsome.'
'Then, Lois, I shall sleep the sounder at the end,' answered the old man with a smile.
'Ah,' said Lois, 'you are tired already.'
'Already,' he repeated musingly. 'Am Ialreadytired? Is it not nearly time for rest? Lois,' he went on, 'there was an old man who made a prayer once, and I think since then it has ever been the best-loved prayer of all the old and the weary. You know it?'
'I think I do,' said Lois.
'Yes, you know it well.' But still, as if he could not resist repeating the dear words, Willie uncovered his head, saying in an earnest voice, 'Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word.' Then he turned to Lois with his child-like smile, and continued: 'I have prayed it so very often, Lois, that I sometimes think the answer must come soon.'
For a moment or two he still stood looking upward; afterwards, he bade farewell again to Lois.
And Lois, answering in the words she knew would please him best, said to him, 'Go in peace.'
She was glad that he left her with a smile—glad of the blessing he called down upon her head.
Watching him as he went away steadily, with his face turned towards the sun-rising, it seemed to Lois as if a rose-tinted morning cloud went with him and overshadowed him.
On the evening of the following day Roger's father rode up to the farm-house.
He brought tidings of wild weather out upon the moors, and told how he and his good horse had been more than once all but buried in a snow-drift.
'I should not have cared to come across on such a tempestuous day,' he added, 'only I want an answer, Roger, to my question.'
'But you got my answer, surely,' said Roger, quickly; 'Wandering Willie carried it to you yesterday.'
His father shook his head. 'Wandering Willie has not been nigh our place,' he said, in a marked, grave tone.
All looked at each other, but no one spoke, only Lois gave a low cry, 'Oh Willie, poor Willie!'
'Lois,' said Roger, coming to her side, 'trust us; we will do all we can—all that there is to do.'
Half-an-hour later every man about the farm went out into the darkness.
Lois, watching with her mother, saw her father go; Roger's father too—his long ride and his weariness quite forgotten. They walked with deliberate determined steps, and few words.
Far ahead already, Lois could just distinguish Roger—all the young men of the place following him—as he stood for a moment a dim figure against a dark sky. He disappeared, and Lois said in her heart, 'May God go with him.'
Three hours—four hours passed—they must be searching still! None of them returned that night.
About midnight the scattered groups of searchers met together. It was a striking scene.
The setting moon, hung round with inky clouds, cast a pale glimmering of light down on to the snow. All round, the moors lay wild and tumbled, with black shadows here and there, cast by the waning moon.
It was cold, but intensely still, with a hush that gave an impression of breathless expectation.
For a little while the men stood together consulting. Then they separated again, Lois's fatherheading one party of searchers, while Roger went with the other.
All carried lanterns, and when they had gone a little way in their different directions, each, looking back towards the others, could only see a few shadowy figures gliding on into the darkness.
The night passed on. The moon set, and the hours of great darkness that came before the dawn had stolen upon them.
At last there came a shout from those a little way in front. The others hurried up. They had found footmarks in the snow. For a little time they followed them clearly; then they failed, for the wind had blown the snow wildly about, and had effaced them.
They dispersed once more, and searched eagerly and silently. By and by one of them called again. The footmark was found, and they never quite lost it afterwards. Sometimes it went straight forward for a little way, then it turned back over almost the same ground. Once or twice the steps crossed and recrossed each other. Often, from the marks in the snow, it seemed as if some one had stood still and waited, and turned this way and that, searching for the road.
Then they stood still too and shouted, calling thelost man's name. Again, and yet again. Strong men as they were, they shivered at the dead blank silence that was their only answer. No echo even, sent them back their voices.
The dawn was coming now, grey and chill, and there was a dull light on the snow. They began to see each other's anxious faces. Still they carried the lanterns low before them, and their great shadows followed weird behind.
The red lantern-light fell on the frozen foot-prints, one by one. They were easy to follow by this time. It must have ceased snowing before they were made, and the wind, too, must have gone down. They were deep and wavering now, as of one who walked heavily, dragging his steps wearily through the snow.
A little way off there was a hollow in the moor, a broken ridge of crags, and a huge stone, round one side of which the snow had drifted thickly. The footsteps ended there.
When the men reached the stone they stood still, but they raised no shout, though their search was over. Why was it that the voices which had been strained so often to reach the lost man's ears, were sunk to a low whisper now, that would not have roused a sleeping child?
Wandering Willie lay at their feet, his head resting on the snow-covered stone. One hand was underneath his head, the other had fallen by his side, and the staff lay close to it, just as the tired hand had laid it down.
They tried gently to raise that arm, but it was quite stiff, frozen into the snow. They laid their hands softly upon his heart, and it was perfectly still. Then they let the full light from the lanterns fall upon his face, and they saw that the old man looked utterly peaceful, nay, almost smiling, and that his eyes were closed.
His pack was unstrapped, and lay beside him on the snow. He had said to Lois that the toilsome journey would make him sleep all the sounder. Yes, so soundly that nothing earthly would awake him, ever any more.
As they stood round him silently, with bowed heads, the clouds parted in the east and the great sun rose up. The snow changed from dull grey to sparkling white, the clouds floated in rosy brightness, and the sun still rose until its clear red light streamed across Willie's face.
It was not hard to guess how it had been. The old man had found his way easily, as long as he kept upon the beaten path, but when he struckinto the wild cross-track over the moor, the blinding mist and driving sleet bewildered him. The wind-driven snow drifted across the path and hid it, shrouding the familiar landmarks from his sight. It must have been as though a white mask lay over all the country.
Willie had never got very far. They thought he must have tried to turn back, but not until he had quite lost his way, and then the darkness came on. At last, perplexed and probably very weary, he had lain down to rest where the big stone sheltered him from the wind. After that he did not suffer any more. Sleep and death came to him quietly, hand in hand.
This was what Roger tried to tell Lois, when, going home before the others, he met her coming towards him along the road that led to the moor.
'Roger—well?'
'Dear Lois,' he said gravely and very tenderly, 'they are bringing him. I came on to tell you. He could not have suffered much.'
'Oh Roger, then he is dead!'
'Yes, Lois, yes. We found him lying on the snow, looking as if he had just fallen asleep.'
'Frozen to death. Oh, Roger—poor Willie!'
'Dearest,' he said, putting his arm round her, 'you would not cry if you had seen his face.'
'But such a lonely death!'
'He is glad now,' said Roger, with something like a sob.
Was it a lonely death? Who knows? It may be that, bearing the summons home, God had sent some messenger from the unseen world, who had been suffered to become a visible presence to the closing eyes. It may be that some voice—perhaps his mother's—had sounded once again in the ears, where its echo had lingered so long. We cannot tell.
Only no child's head was ever pillowed more peacefully in its dreamless sleep, than was Wandering Willie's, resting on the stone round which the snow had drifted.
And who, that looked into his restful face, could doubt that the old man's prayer was heard?
Down to the white moorland the Master sent at last, the message of recall, and hearing it even through the deep snow-sleep of that winter's night, His servant arose gladly, and from earth's storms and weariness he departed in peace.