It is a
district lonely enough even in summer time, that joint watershed of
Tweed, Annan, and Clyde, but when winter gales sweep over those lofty
moorlands, and snow drives down before the bitter blast, let no man
unused to the hill attempt that road. It was but the other year that a
lonely shepherd's wife near Tweedshaws, one stormy evening when snow
drove wildly across the moor, thought that she heard the cry of a human
voice come down the gale. Again and again, as she sat by her cosy fire
of glowing peat she imagined that some one called for help. Again and
again she rose, and opening the door, listened, but never, when she
stood by the open door waiting for the call to come again, was anything
to be heard but the noise of the storm and the rush of the wind,
anything to be seen but the driving snow. Long she listened, but the cry
came no more, and naturally she concluded that imagination had fooled
her. In the morning, not very many yards away from the door,
half-covered by its snowy winding-sheet, lay the stiff-frozen body of a
young man. There had been the breakdown of some vehicle down the road
the previous evening, and he had thought to make his way to Moffat on
foot. Of what do men think when they are lost in the snow? Of nothing,
probably, one may conclude; very likely, before it has dawned upon them
that there is danger, the mind, like the body, has become numbed with
the cold, and they probably only think of rest and sleep.
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