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.
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