scene o' strife, to lament owre the dead, and to administer consolation
to the deein. There is a puir widow supportin the lifeless head o' her
husband--kissin his bluidy lips i' the agonies o' her grief, and strivin
to close the gapin wounds, that gie nae mair pain to the body that bears
them; a beautifu and an affectionate dochter kneelin by the side o' her
expirin parent, twinin her arms around his neck, and droonin wi' her
bitter lamentations the deep groans o' the deein man; a band o' sisters
are noo endeavourin to bear awa the dead body o' a fair-haired striplin,
wha had been the pride o' their family, and the joy o' their hearts; and
there is ane there wha, though nae relation to the youth, feels his fate
mair deeply than the nearest o' his kin; upon her pale face there is a
fearfu struggle between modesty and grief--the last overcomes, and,
forgetfu o' the presence o' ony but the dead, she clasps him in her
arms, while her breast heaves and sabs like ane wha is suffocatin wi
some unutterable feelin! Then there are her neebors, wha never kenned
onything o' her affections, till death had divulged them, remarkin, in
the language o' Scripture, 'Behold how she loved him!' But, 'deed, sir,
I maun hae dune; for ye'll be like to think that I've gane clean daft
athegither wi' sae muckle nonsense; and I maun confess, that, when I get
on thae auld stories, I haena guid gettin aff them again."
"I just think," said the stranger, "that, if you _had_ lived in the days
of the Covenant, you would have been a most inveterate conventicler;
and, to confess a truth, had I lived at the same period, I would most
likely have been found in the same ranks; for, ere I arrived at that age
when men are ashamed to cry, I often wept most heartily over the
sufferings of the poor hillmen. But night approaches; and, as I suppose
I have a long way to go before I can get a bed, I would thank you to
direct me the nearest road to Cupar."
"To Cupar, sir?" said James, in surprise. "Ye dinna surely intend to
gang to Cupar this nicht?"
"No," said the stranger; "I only intend to go as far as the first
public-house where I can find accommodation for the night; but that will
not be just at hand, I believe."
"Atweel no, sir," said James; "for there's no a public-house on the road
to Cupar nearer than John Denmill's--and that's at Easter Fernie a' the
gate. But John's a queer chap, and he _will_ divert ye, if ye ance get
there."
"Well," said the stranger, "a good fire, a good supper, and a jolly
landlord, make the best entertainment for a traveller on a winter
evening."
Our two friends proceeded for a short distance farther together; and
before they parted, James not only gave the young man the best
instructions he could with respect to the road, but also invited him to
come to his cottage, which was just at hand, and partake of some bread
and cheese, assuring him at the same time "that he wad get nae meat on
the hill, and that his guidwife wad be as proud as a duchess to hae sic
a guest under her roof."
The stranger thanked James most heartily for his kindness, but civilly
declined the offered entertainment. They parted with mutual esteem.
James went home with his meal, and the stranger went on his way.
By this time the sun had sunk to the verge of the horizon, and the sky,
which had been previously clear, began to overcast. A fresh gale, too,
sprung up from the east, and blew full in the stranger's face. Night was
approaching fast; and he had five miles to travel upon an intricate
hilly road, before he could reach any place of shelter. The moon, upon
which he had depended for light, now threatened to be of little service;
for though she occasionally burst upon his eye through the ragged edges
of the driving clouds, it was but a momentary flash, which deepened,
instead of dissipating the surrounding darkness. He buttoned his coat,
drew his hat closer down upon his head, and made all the speed he could
against the tempest, which now blew so violently that it sometimes
brought him to a dead stand; and notwithstanding of his perilous
circumstances, he could not refrain from laughing at himself, as he
struggled with the viewless element which opposed his progress, and
whistled defiance to his vengeance.
He at length came to a place where the road divided, and, turning his
back to the storm, he stood for a few minutes to recollect the
instructions which he had received from his late guide. A number of
little lights now caught his eye, twinkling from the cottage windows in
the vale below; and as he again proceeded on his way, he could not help
looking back, and indulging a momentary feeling of envy over the
condition of those who were sitting warm and dry by their own firesides,
while he was toiling amid the tempest. The poorest inhabitants of these
cottages, thought he, are, for the present, blessed, when compared with
me. They possess all the comforts of home, and perhaps do not appreciate
their worth, while I am destitute of all but a deep knowledge of the
value of what I do not possess.
As he advanced, the lights began to disappear. He seemed to have passed
beyond the limits of the inhabited country, and nothing was to be seen
but an uncertain road before him, and darkness on every side. The storm
grew wilder, and the doubtful path, which he had previously pursued,
terminated in a number of little tracks, which diverged in all
directions among the furze, as if they had been formed by a flock of
sheep scattered over the hill in search of their pasture. He tried to
retrace his steps, in the supposition that he had taken the wrong road;
but a blinding shower of snow came driving with the wind, and concealed
every object which might have guided him in his return. He became
completely bewildered, and every moment increased his confusion. The
snow began to drift; and all the stories that he had ever heard of
benighted travellers lost among the hills rushed into his mind with
painful distinctness. He began to run in the direction, as he supposed,
of the little hamlets which he had passed in the afternoon; but his feet
got entangled among the gorse and broom which covered the hill, and he
fell several times at full length among the snow. He stood still and
listened, with the faint expectation that he might hear some sound which
would lead him to the abodes of men. Something tinkled at a distance,
between the gusts of the storm, like the ringing of a bell. He
immediately shaped his course by the sound, and was glad to hear that it
grew louder as he advanced. Though he could not conjecture the purpose
of a bell in that deserted region, yet such it certainly was; and, as no
bell will ring without motion, he trusted to find some one who would be
able to direct him to a place of shelter. But, after he had walked for a
considerable time, at his utmost speed, he found himself very little
nearer the object of his pursuit, which seemed to retire as fast as he
advanced. He again began to run, and soon had the satisfaction to find
himself within a very few yards of the sound; but still he could not
perceive the object from which it proceeded. The mysterious bellringer
seemed to increase his speed, as if he had discovered a pursuer, and
determined to elude his grasp.
The stranger was out of breath; he paused to listen. The bell still
rung, and still retired, though at a less rapid rate. He had never
believed in ghosts nor fairies; but this mysterious phenomenon seemed to
confirm his nurse's tales, and make "chimeras true." He was not one,
however, who would shrink from phantoms without evidence of their
existence.
"Honest, honest, Iago!" said he, quoting Shakspere,
'If that thou be'st a devil, I cannot kill thee.'
But, devil or ghost, I will hunt thee to thy den, and if I can overtake
thee, I will tread thee under my feet."
So saying, he renewed the chase, and, in a few minutes, the bell was
again jingling at a fearful rate, almost among his feet. He called out
to the flying mystery to stop and speak with him. No answer was made;
but his words seemed to produce some effect; for in a moment more the
bell was off in another direction, tinkling and jingling as loudly as
ever.
"You shall not escape me thus," said the stranger, who had quite
forgotten his own bewildered condition in his earnestness to discover
the cause of this unaccountable noise.
He again turned, and followed the bell with his utmost speed; and, after
a long pursuit, and many doublings and windings among the broom, he at
length tumbled over some soft body, which rolled among his feet. He
grasped it in his arms and listened. The bell had ceased to jingle, and
nothing was to be heard but the howling of the wind and the rustling of
the drift.
"I have you now, my boy," said the stranger; "and I will bring you to a
severe reckoning for all this sport."
"Bae!" cried the terrified bellringer, struggling to escape from the
rude grasp which held him.
"Bae!" said the stranger, imitating the voice of the animal. "What a
silly pursuit I have been engaged in! But I am glad to find that I am
not alone on these wild hills in this wild night."
The young man's knowledge of rural economy convinced him that he had
chased from his companions a poor sheep, who had been intrusted with a
bell about his neck, as was the custom in many parts of the country, to
enable the shepherd to discover his flock in the morning. The adventure
of the renowned Don Quixote occurred to his mind, and he could not help
laughing at himself even in the midst of his misery.
Both the sheep and the man were completely exhausted, and they lay still
together for some time among the snow; but the piercing blast and the
gathering drift soon convinced the latter that he must either renew his
exertions, or perish with his fleecy companion beneath the accumulating
heap. He accordingly started up, and proceeded--he knew not where. His
imagination became haunted with the horrors of his condition, and the
idea
"Of covered pits unfathomably deep,
A dire descent, beyond the reach of frost;
Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge,
Smoothed up with snow"--
'so paralysed his powers that he could scarcely move. But again
"The thoughts of home
Rush'd on his nerves, and call'd their vigour forth."
He now found himself descending the hill-side; but whether it was the
same side which he had ascended, or some other, he could not conjecture.
By this time the snow had accumulated to a considerable depth in the
hollows; and he frequently plunged into it up to the middle before he
was aware. He pulled out his watch to try if he could ascertain the
hour; but he could not. He tried his voice, in the hope that some one
might hear him, and come to his assistance; but his feeble cry died away
unanswered upon the blast. His situation was a desperate one, and he
resolved to make one desperate effort more for existence. He turned his
back to the storm, determined to run before it as far as he was able;
and, should he perish, if possible to perish upon his feet. He had not
proceeded far, however, when he tumbled over a steep bank, and rolled
from hillock to hillock till he reached the bottom of the den in a state
of insensibility. When he again recovered, he found himself beneath the
storm, stretched among the undrifted snow, which was lying about a foot
deep around him, while close by his side a brawling stream was dashing
over the large stones which, like him, had rolled down the hill, and
rested in the bottom of the glen. "Here," thought the stranger, "I have
at last found a place where I may die in peace; and it is, perhaps,
better to give up the struggle, then again to rush into the tempest only
to perish beneath its pitiless pelting."
What were his religious feelings in the prospect of death we know not;
but his home and his friends, the grief which his early fate would
occasion, and the melancholy satisfaction which they would derive from
bestowing the last rites upon his lifeless remains, were present to his
imagination. And, lest they should be deprived of the performance of
these sadly-pleasing duties, by the ignorance of those who found him, he
pulled out his pocket-book, and endeavoured to write his own name, with
the name of his father's farm, and the name of the parish in which it
was situated.
While thus engaged, in that
"Hopeless certainty of mind
Which makes us feel at length resign'd
To _that_ which our foreboding years
Presents the worst and last of fears,"
the deep sonorous sound of a well-blown horn fell upon his ears, and
roused him to fresh exertions. He had crossed the burn and clambered to
the top of the bank before the blast had ceased; and, as he endeavoured
to fix the direction of the sound, the horn was again winded. It seemed
not to be very distant. Hope invigorated his weary limbs, and he dashed
through the opposing wreaths as stoutly as if his toils had been only
newly begun. Another blast was blown, and he continued to run upon the
sound till it ceased, and it was not again repeated.
He recollected that it was common for the farmers, in many parts of
Scotland, to blow a horn at eight o'clock on the winter evenings, for
the purpose of warning their servants to attend to the suppering of the
horses; and he hoped that, if he could keep to the proper direction,
this might lead him to some hospitable farmhouse, where he would soon
forget the horrors of the storm before a comfortable fire. He now
proceeded more leisurely, striving not to deviate from the course which
the horn had induced him to take; and keeping a sharp look-out on all
sides, and an intense attention to every sound, in the expectation that
some cottage light might twinkle upon his eye, or some human voice reach
his ear, in the intervals of the deafening blast. But still he could
discover no sight nor sound of man; and the shifting tempest, which
attacked him from every direction, soon confounded all his ideas of time
and distance. In some places, too, the snow had accumulated in such
immense masses, that he could not pass through them; and the circuits
which he was obliged to make tended farther to confuse his mind. His
spirits again began to sink, and his limbs to falter; and that sluggish
indifference which follows the extinction of hope again took possession
of his senses. But, while he was dragging himself onward with slow and
feeble steps, a new and extraordinary noise broke upon his ear. He stood
still and listened; but he could not conjecture the cause of it. It
seemed to mingle with, and yet it was different from, the ravings of the
storm. It proceeded from one quarter, and remained steadily in one
place. There was a mingling of sounds, like the dashing of waves, the
rushing of winds, and the jingling of a thousand little bells,
accompanied occasionally by a harsh, guttural cry, like that which is
emitted by a band of wild geese when disturbed in their "watery haunt."
Though this mysterious noise was more appalling than attractive, and
though it promised neither rest nor shelter to the stranger, yet it
operated upon his curiosity, and induced him to continue his exertions.
The terrific sounds grew louder and louder as he advanced. The clouds of
snow, which were every moment dashed into his face, prevented him from
seeing more than a few yards before him; and an involuntary shudder
passed over his frame, as he thought that he might even now be toppling
upon the brink of some dreadful gulf, and that another step might
precipitate him into destruction. Something terrible was certainly at
hand; but what was the nature of the danger was beyond his powers of
conception.
The unaccountable noise, which was now thundering beneath him, resembled
most the dashing of a cataract, or the roaring of the ocean, when its
far-accumulated waves are broken into foaming madness among hidden
rocks. He stood still, and gazed intently in the direction of the sound.
The storm abated a little in its violence, and he thought he could
perceive a black expanse at a little distance stretching out before him.
He advanced a few steps nearer it. It was tossing in fearful commotion,
and here and there streaked with lines, and dotted with patches of
white. It was evidently water; but whether lake, river, or ocean, was
all a mystery.
"Can it be possible," thought he, "that the storm has insensibly driven
me in the right direction? Do I now stand among the rocks that look down
upon the breaker-beaten bay of St Andrews? Or have I returned again to
the banks of the Tay? Or can this be the little loch which I passed in
the afternoon, and which then lay stretched out in frozen tranquillity
beneath me?"
His heart grew sick and his brain dizzy with conjecture. He turned away
from the stunning scene with a shiver of despair. A strange sense of
torpidity and madness passed along his nerves--it was the confused
energy of an active soul, struggling with the numbedness of exhausted
nature. The snow seemed to swim around him--his eyes became heavy, and,
when he closed them, numberless phantoms seemed to pass before him, like
figures in a dream. In this state of drowsy insensibility, he lost for a
time all recollection of his sufferings--his blood began to stagnate in
his veins, and the icy coldness of death was stealing over his
extremities, when a covey of wild ducks swept past, and their short,
sharp cries startled him again into consciousness of his condition. When
he opened his eyes, a faint light seemed to be glimmering from a
hill-side about a hundred yards above him. It was now seen, and now
lost, as the clouds of drift passed between him and the place from which
it issued. But still it was there; and its dim, shadowy lustre was to
him like life to the dead. Hope again returned to his heart, and
animation to his limbs; and in a few minutes he had reached the window
of a little cottage, which was so completely drifted up with snow on all
sides save that on which he stood, that any one might have passed in
broad daylight without supposing it to be a human habitation.
The stranger looked in at the window. The fire, which was composed of
peats, had been covered up with ashes to prevent them from wasting
through the night; but, by this time, the small dust had passed through
the grate, and there only remained a little heap of live embers, which
cast a sombre glow around the interior of the cottage. The family were
in bed. The stranger rapped gently on the window, and then listened for
an answer; but nothing stirred. He rapped a little louder, and again
listened.
"What's that, Jamie?" said a female voice within.
"Hoch, hoch, hey!" said another, yawning and stretching out his arms
from the same box or bed, as if to relieve them from the uneasiness of
lying long in one position. It was evident that the voice of the first
speaker had awakened the second, without communicating to his mind the
purport of the question, which was again repeated.
"What was that Jamie?"
"What was _what_, lassie?" said the wondering husband. "I see naething
by ordinar."
"Man," returned the guidwife, "did you no hear yon awfu rattle at the
windock? My flesh's a' creepin, for I fear something no canny's aboot
the back o' the hoose. It was just like the noise that was heard at
Willy Patty's windock last year afore his mither dee'd."
"Havers, lassie; ye've just been dreamin," said the guidman, who was
anxious to quiet his partner's fears, though he was not altogether free
from some tremours himself.
The stranger gave another rap.
"Hear ye that, then, Jamie?" said the guidwife. "It's no sic a dream, I
trow; for that's something awfu."
"Deed is't," said James, who was now convinced that the "rattle" was not
quite so terrible as it had been represented; "it's an awfu thing for
ony puir body to be oot in sic a nicht as this; but let's be thankfu,
Nanny, that we hae a roof to hap oorsels frae the storm, and a door to
let a hooseless body in at."
James flung himself around, and disentangled his feet from the
bedclothes, with the intention of going immediately to admit the
stranger; but, ere he got away from the bedside, his "better half" laid
hold of him, and cried out, in great perturbation--
"Stop, Jamie--stop, I beseech ye; and consider weel what ye're aboot;
for ye ken that, forby the danger o' robbers and rascals, the evil
spirits just delight to range aboot in sic a nicht as this, like roarin
lions, seekin wham they may devour; and wha kens what may come owre ye,
if ye pit yersel i' their merciment."
"Havers, woman!" said James again; "let me go, I tell ye; for I'll speak
at the windock, and spier if he wants shelter, though it war auld Satan
himsel."
Nanny relaxed her grasp; but she seemed determined that the guidman
should encounter no danger which she did not take a share of; and she
too sprung to the floor, and followed him to the window.
"Wha's there?" cried James, in a voice that showed he was neither to be
_cowed_ by fiends, fairies, ghosts, nor men.
"A bewildered stranger," was the reply.
"Weel," said James, "a great stranger may be a great villain; but, for
a' that, if I understand my Bible richtly, the words, 'I was a stranger
and ye took me in,' will never be addressed to ane wha has the hard
heart to refuse a hameless wanderer the shelter o' his roof in sic a
nicht as this. Sae just gang ye aboot to the tither side o' the hoose,
and come alang the fore wa' a' the gate, till ye find the door, and I'll
let ye in."
"Thank you!" said the stranger.
Nanny, who now discovered that the object of all her fears was neither
ghost nor goblin, but a conversable and civil creature of her own
species, thought that her husband might be safely trusted in his
presence without her support; and she accordingly returned again to her
bed.
James lighted the lamp, and went to admit the stranger; but, when he
opened the door, he opened no passage for his entrance. A solid wall of
snow still separated the guidman and his intended guest.
"Preserve's a'!" cried the former, "that's been an awfu' nicht, indeed.
The door's drifted up to the lintel; and there's no a hole i' the hale
hicht o't, that a mouse could creep oot or in through. Are ye aye there
yet, freen?" (addressing the stranger, who answered in the affirmative.)
"Aweel, aweel," he continued, "ye maun just content yersel awhile or I
get a spade and try and mak some oot-gate in't."
James got a spade, and commenced to delve the snow into the passage,
between the _hallant_ and the outer door; but he had no sooner broken
down a part of the barrier, than the insidious drift entered the
aperture, and, getting under his shirt, which was the only garment he
had on, it whirled about his bare legs. He persisted for awhile, but his
powers of perseverance ultimately forsook him. He flung down the spade,
and, as every gust of wind brought a fresh volley of snow whistling
about his ankles, he leaped as high as the henroost, which formed the
ceiling of the lobby, would permit.
"Preserve's a', that's dreadfu!" he at length cried out, making a most
magnificent jump at the same time. "Flesh and bluid canna endure
that--it wad gar a horse swither. Ye'll just hae to thole awee till I
get my claes on, lad."
James bounded into the house, and commenced immediately to get his
shivering limbs conducted into the proper openings of a pair of canvas
trousers. But this was no easy task. He had got one foot in, and the
other within a few inches of the entrance, when his great toe unluckily
got entangled in one of the pockets of the garment, and, as he was
striving to preserve his equilibrium, by hopping through the house
backwards upon one leg, the stranger, who had forced himself through
the aperture which he had made in the doorway, entered like a moving
mass of snow. James at length succeeded, by the support of the bed,
which happily resisted his retrograde movement, in getting on his
clothes; and then all his attention was directed to the comfort of his
guest.
"Dear me, man," said he, taking hold of the stranger's arm with the one
hand, and a broom with the other, "ye'll need hauf-an-hoor's soopin
afore we get a sicht o' ye. I'm sure ye're unco far frae comfortable
below that wread o' snaw."
As the stranger was standing before the fire, while James was
endeavouring to clear away the snow from his neck and shoulder, the
sudden change of temperature which he had experienced, expanding the
fluids faster than the vessels which contained them, produced in his
extremities that agonising sensation which is more forcibly expressed by
the Scottish word _dinnling_, than by any other word with which we are
acquainted. Sickness and pain overpowered his exhausted nerves. His eyes
turned wildly up to the roof of the cottage. He gave one suffocating
gasp for breath, and sank senseless upon the floor. James seized him in
his arms, and called out to his wife--
"O Nanny, Nanny, woman! get up and help's here! The puir callant's fa'en
into a drow, and I'm feared he's gaun to dee upon our hands athegither.
Get up, woman, and let's try if onything can be dune to bring him aboot
again."
Nanny sprang up at the call of her husband; and, seizing the stranger by
the hand, cried out--