But each attempt failed, and the
baffled Indians finally drew off.
With thankful hearts, if with sore labour, the surviving white men, by
lightening their vessel, got her off the ground, and succeeded in
finding and stopping the leak. A few days saw them again safely at
Detroit.
No more, as a civilian, did Andrew Kerr face the Indians. On getting
back to New York in 1764 he was given a commission as ensign in the 1st
battalion of the 42nd Regiment, and in various parts of the world he saw
much service, finally retiring about 1780 with the rank of captain. He
did not wholly, however, sever his connection with the service, for
later, after he had purchased an estate in the Border, and had married,
he became a major in the Dumfries Militia.
It is given to few to pass a youth so stormy as Kerr's, and to end, as
he did, by becoming a peaceful, prosperous Border laird.
BORDER SNOWSTORMS
"St. Agnes' Eve--ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold."
The great round-backed, solemn Border hills, in summer time kindly
sleeping giants, smiling in their sleep, take on another guise when
winter smites with pitiless blast, when
"The sounds that drive wild deer and fox
To shelter in the brake and rocks,"
bellow fearsomely among the crags, and down glen and burn rushes the
White Death, bewildering, blinding, choking, and at the last, perhaps,
with Judas kiss folding in its icy arms some luckless shepherd whom duty
has sent from his warm fireside to the rescue of his master's sheep.
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