m seeing the
danger, and a false step on the bank might deposit him where he would
never come out alive. To a man alone on the hill in such weather, the
task was arduous, the danger great; moreover, in the last thirty-six
hours he had walked far, had undergone great toil, and he had been
without sleep all night. The prospect was no pleasing one. But he
struggled on through the blinding, wind-driven snow, heading, as he
confidently believed, straight for home. Yet doubt presently began to
fill his mind. He should long ago have reached the Douglas Burn, but not
a sign even suggestive of such a thing as a watercourse had he yet seen.
Presently he roused with a start, for now he stood amongst trees,
stretching apparently in endless succession to an infinite distance.
After all, it seemed that he _had_ missed his way. Where he was he could
not tell; and it needed some minutes of anxious groping ere he could
clear his mind and make certain of his position. He stood not much more
than fifty yards from the farm-house door, by the side of a little clump
of trees, which in that blurred light and in the confusion of the
drifting snow took on the semblance of some vast forest. Without being
aware of it, Hogg had crossed the gully of the Douglas Burn on a bridge
formed by the deep snow, and crossed over the park wall in similar
fashion.

Many have been the terrible winters since those of which Hogg wrote,
many the lives lost, and more, perhaps, the narrow escapes from what
seemed certain death. In 1803 the frozen, deep-buried body of a man was
found near Ashestiel, within what--but for the raging storm the previous
night--must have been easy hail of his own cottage, where, sick with
anxiety, his wife and little ones sat waiting his return from the hill.
In that same storm a young shepherd, within sight of his own father,
fell over a precipice near Birkhill, and, with spine hopelessly injured,
lay helpless amongst the snow-covered boulders in a place inaccessible
to the distracted father. A party succeeded in rescuing him, but rescue
availed him little; he lay afterwards at home for several weeks unable
to stir hand or foot, and in great pain, till death mercifully released
him.

In 1825 came an on-fall so sudden and violent that scores of people who
happened to be on journeys were compelled to remain for weeks wherever
they had chanced to be when the storm broke. There was no possibility of
getting away; except those in the immedi