tually 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, a