Continuing in the same direction for some time, I came to a barn.
Benumbed, fatigued, and ready as I was to drop from the saddle, I
entered it as joyfully as a shipwrecked sailor climbs a barren rock.
I scarcely could dismount, and it was with great difficulty I could
unbuckle and take off the bridle of Bay Meg: but my hands were so
frost bitten and my perseverance so exhausted, that the saddle was
beyond my ability. I therefore shut the door, and left her to feed
on what she could find; while I went and laid myself down among some
trusses of straw, that were heaped on one side.

The pain of my thawing hands would not immediately suffer me to go to
sleep, and, just as it was beginning to decrease and I to slumber,
the door opened and a woman came in. My fears were again alarmed, for
as I listened I heard her weep bitterly. In no long time afterward
a man leaned forward, through the door, and said--'Mary! Art thou
there?'--To which she replied with a sob--'Yea, Tummas; I be here.'

My half frozen blood and my fears again afloat made me tremble through
every limb; and there was something in the grief of the woman, and
particularly in the voice of the man, which had no tendency to calm my
agitation. I could see distinctly, for the moon shone full in at the
door. He entered the barn, they sat down together, and after some
trifling questions I heard the following dialogue.

'And so, Mary, thou say'st thou beest with child?'

'Yea, Tummas, that I too surely be; the more is my hard hap.'

'And what dost thou mean to do?'