eet deep; so we could not get at them at all.
Saturday morning: the first good news I heard was that the cows had been
found, and dragged by ropes down to the enclosure the horses had made
for them-selves: they were half dead, poor beasts; but after struggling
for four hours to and from a haystack two hundred yards off, one end of
which was unburied, some oaten hay was procured for them. There was
now not a particle of food in the house. The servants remained in their
beds, declining to get up, and alleging that they might as well "die
warm." In the middle of the day a sort of forlorn-hope was organized
by the gentlemen to try to find the fowl-house, but they could not get
through the drift: however, they dug a passage to the wash-house, and
returned in triumph with about a pound of very rusty bacon they had
found hanging up there; this was useless without fuel, so they dug for a
little gate leading to the garden, fortunately hit its whereabouts, and
soon had it broken up and in the kitchen grate. By dint of taking all
the lead out of the tea-chests, shaking it, and collecting every pinch
of tea-dust, we got enough to make a teapot of the weakest tea, a cup of
which I took to my poor crying maids in their beds, having first put a
spoonful of the last bottle of whisky which the house possessed into it,
for there was neither, sugar nor milk to be had. At midnight the snow
ceased for a few hours, and a hard sharp frost set in; this made our
position worse, for they could now make no impression on the snow,
and only broke the shovels in trying. I began to think seriously of
following the maids example, in order to "die warm." We could do nothing
but wait patiently. I went up to a sort of attic where odds and ends
were stowed away, in search of something to eat, but could find nothing
more tempting than a supply of wax matches. We knew there was a cat
under the house, for we heard her mewing; and it was suggested to take
up the carpets first, then the boards, and have a hunt for the poor old
pussy but we agreed to bear our hunger a little longer, chiefly, I am
afraid, because she was known to be both thin and aged.

Towards noon on Sunday the weather suddenly changed, and rain began to
come down heavily and steadily; this cheered us all immensely, as it
would wash the snow away probably, and so it did to some degree; the
highest drifts near the house lessened considerably in a few hours, and
the gentlemen, who by this time we