Page:Awful phenomena of nature -- snow storms, third of March and twenty-third April, 1827.pdf/13

 through a hole, they heard a hoarse and languid voice issuing from it, which seemed to say, "Help, my dear husband! help, my dear brother! help."

The husband and brother thunderstruck, and nd at the same time encouraged by these words, fell to their work with redoubled ardour, on the place whence the voice came, which grew more distinct as the work advanced.

It was long before they made a pretty large opening, through which the brother descended, s into a dark pit, asking who it was that could be alive in such a place? Mary Anne knew him by his voice, and answered with a trembling ud broken ascent, intermixed with tears of joy, "'Tis I, my dear brother, who am still alive in company with my daughter and my sister-in-law, who are at my elbow. God, in whom I have always trusted, still hoping that he would inspire you with the thoughts of coming to our relief, has been graciously pleased to keep us alive."

The passage being enlarged, they were taken out with all convenient speed; and being brought to a friends house, were there fed on a thin diet, and in small quantities at a time, as suiting their state of inanition; when their strength was a little recruited, they gave an account that they subsisted all that time on the milk of two goats, which had been shut up with them, and about a dozen chesnuts, that lay in the manger, where they found some hay with which they fed the goats, one of which becoming dry, the