ainst the frosty blue. It was the season still remembered in the
North as the White Winter--the worst, they say, since the famous 1808.

For days together Jim Mason was stuck with his bags in the Dalesman's
Daughter, and there was no communication between the two Dales. On
the Mere Marches the snow massed deep and impassable in thick, billowy
drifts. In the Devil's Bowl men said it lay piled some score feet deep.
And sheep, seeking shelter in the ghylls and protected spots, were
buried and lost in their hundreds.

That is the time to test the hearts of shepherds and sheep-dogs, when
the wind runs ice-cold across the waste of white, and the low woods on
the upland walks shiver black through a veil of snow, and sheep must be
found and folded or lost: a trial of head as well as heart, of resource
as well as resolution.

In that winter more than one man and many a dog lost his life in the
quiet performance of his duty, gliding to death over the slippery
snow-shelves, or overwhelmed beneath an avalanche of the warm,
suffocating white: "smoored," as they call it. Many a deed was done,
many a death died, recorded only in that Book which holds the names of
those--men or animals, souls or no souls--who tried.

They found old Wrottesley, the squire's head shepherd, lying one morning
at Gill's foot, like a statue in its white bed, the snow gently blowing
about the venerable face, calm and beautiful in death. And stretched
upon his bosom, her master's hands blue, and stiff, still clasped about
her neck, his old dog Jess. She had huddled there, as a last hope, to
keep the dear, dead master warm, her great heart riven, hoping where
there was no hope.

That night she followed him to herd sheep in a better land. Death from
exposure, Dingley, the vet., gave it; but as little M'Adam, his eyes
dimmer than their wont, declared huskily; "We ken better, Wullie."

Cyril Gilbraith, a young man not overburdened with emotions, told with
a sob in his voice how, at the terrible Rowan Rock, Jim Mason had stood,
impotent, dumb, big-eyed, watching Betsy--Betsy, the friend and partner
of the last ten years--slipping over the ice-cold surface, silently
appealing to the hand that had never failed her before--sliding to
Eternity.

In the Daleland that winter the endurance of many a shepherd and his
dog was strained past breaking-point. From the frozen Black Water to
the white-peaked Grammoch Pike two men only, each always with his shaggy
adjutant