The Traveler in the Snow.
A TRAVELER was crossing a mountain height alone, over almost untrodden snows. Warning had been given him that if slumber pressed down his weary eyelids, they would inevitably be sealed in death. For a time he went bravely along his dreary path. But with the deepening shade and freezing blast of night, there fell a weight upon his brain and eyes which seemed to be irresistible. In vain he tried to reason with himself, in vain he strained his utmost energies to shake off that fatal heaviness. At this crisis of his fate, his foot struck against a heap that lay across his path. No stone was that, although no stone could be colder or more lifeless. He stooped to touch it and found a human body, half buried beneath a fresh drift of snow. The next moment the traveler had taken a brother in his arms, and was chafing his hands, and chest, and brow, breathing upon the stiff, cold lips, the warm breath of a living soul; pressing the silent heart to the beating pulses of his own generous bosom. The effort to save another had brought back to himself life, and warmth, and energy. He was a man again, instead of a weak creature succumbing to a despairing helplessness, dropping down in dreamless sleep to die. “He saved a brother, and was saved himself.”—English Hearts and English Hands.