The
shepherd returned to bed, and had almost succeeded in falling into a
doze, when again some impulse caused him to sit up and listen. From far
in the distant hills came quivering a strange low moaning that brought
with it something of awe and suspense. Nearer it drove, and nearer,
rising at length to a fierce bellow; and then, with appalling roar, as
of thunder, the gale hurled itself on to the building, shaking it to the
foundations. In the pitch blackness of the night Hogg groped his way to
an opening in the byre over which he and Borthwick slept, and thrust out
a hand and arm. "So completely was the air overloaded with falling and
driving snow that, but for the force of the wind, I felt as if I had
thrust my arm into a wreath of snow," he writes.
Presently he roused Borthwick, who had slept soundly through the hubbub,
and at once his fellow-shepherd dressed and tried to make his way from
the byre to the kitchen, a distance of no more than fourteen yards. But
even in the little time which had elapsed since the breaking of the
storm the space between kitchen and byre had drifted up with snow as
high as the house walls, and Borthwick straightway lost himself; neither
could he find his way to the house, nor succeed in regaining the byre.
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