For two days scores of men searched every likely
spot, but never a clue they found, except Goodfellow's hat, which lay in
a peat-hag at no great distance from the post where the mail-bags had
been hung.
Then--some said it was a dream that guided them--some one thought of an
old, disused road along which there was possibility the lost men might
have made their way. There, from a drift protruded something black--a
boot; and on his back, deep buried, lay Goodfellow. Near at hand they
found MacGeorge, in an easy attitude, as if quietly sleeping, on his
face a smile--"a kind o' a pleasure," the finders called it--such a
smile, perhaps, as the face of the "good and faithful servant" may wear
when he entereth into the joy of his Lord.
Many have been the snowy years since that in which MacGeorge threw away
life for duty's sake. Besides winters, such as that hard "Crimean" one
of 1854-5, there have been, for example, the terrible season of 1860-1,
the bitter winter of 1878-9, when snow lay, practically unbroken, from
November till March, and the frost was unrelenting in severity; and
there have been others, too numerous to specify. Many a man has perished
on the hill, before and since, but no tragedy ever seized the popular
imagination so firmly as did that on the Moffat road in 1831.
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