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A few people were assembled together, though no one had really expected me, and after a short service I started on my homeward journey, having refused the invitations of my kind people to stay the night amongst them, as I was anxious to get back to Wolstaston in time for my six o'clock evening service, and I did not anticipate that I should encounter any greater difficulties in my return home than I had done in coming to Ratlinghope.
Most trying was the long delay thus caused to a man who knew that in his own home he must probably be reckoned among the dead; but there was no help for it, and at last Leebotwood was reached, the place where the lane to Wolstaston turned off from the main road, and where I was to leave the fly, and, as I hoped, ride home.
Still, as no one else could be found to take it, and I thought that the Ratlinghope people might think that "half-a-loaf was better than no bread," I consented to accept the living, and do the best I could for it; so I altered my second service at Wolstaston from three o'clock in the afternoon to six, which enabled me to give an afternoon service at Ratlinghope every Sunday.
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.
Above Wolstaston the ground rises steadily for about a mile and a half till you come to the unenclosed moorland, which stretches away for many miles of open country, covered with heather and gorse. It was under the circumstances that I have already mentioned that the living of Ratlinghope was offered to me.
I had not gone a hundred yards, when it became evident that it would be impossible to ride far, and that I should be obliged to walk again, so the horse was sent back to Leebotwood by a man whom we met, and I started again on my own feet. Just at this time we met another man coming down over the fields from Wolstaston. He had letters with him to post; those letters were from my home.
As she did not answer at once, I suppose she was taking a careful observation of me, for after a few moments she said, "Why, you look like Mr. Carr of Wolstaston." "I am Mr.
The form of the country, however, was a sufficient guide to my destination, and after a severe struggle over and through the drifts, I reached my little church at a quarter-past three o'clock, just two hours and a quarter from the time I had left Wolstaston.
It was quite impossible to look up or see for a yard around, and the snow came down so thick and fast that my servant, who had come some distance up the lane from Wolstaston in hopes of seeing something of me, describing it to me afterwards, said, "Sir, it was just as if they were throwing it on to us out of buckets." I fought on through it, however, expecting soon to come to the fir wood.
I soon found, however, that the task I had undertaken was no very light one, as the only access from Wolstaston to Ratlinghope was by mountain tracks, over the highest part of the Long Mynd, unless indeed one drove round the base of the hill, a distance of at least twelve miles.
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