Hours had passed,
darkness had fallen, and he did not come home. Then a shepherd
remembered having seen him crossing a certain hill where snow lay extra
deep. To this hill in the morning the searchers betook themselves, to
find that a great avalanche had taken place, leaving the hill bare but
for the night's coating of snow. At the hill-foot the old snow was piled
in giant masses. Here a dog sniffed, and whimpered, and began to scrape.
They found Laidlaw buried there in tons of snow, uninjured save in one
arm, and after fourteen hours burial in his snowy sepulchre he was still
partly conscious. When the tumbling snow mass overwhelmed him he had had
presence of mind and strength to clear from before his face breathing
space sufficient to preserve life. Laidlaw lived for many years after,
in no permanent respect a sufferer from his burial and resurrection.
His was an experience of no common order, yet it was a case less strange
than that of a sportsman, many years ago, who, unused to the hills, was
lost amongst the snow one evening of sudden storm. Far and long he
wandered, till, utterly exhausted, dropping from fatigue and cold, he
chanced on a roof-less cottage, the crumbling walls of which promised
some shelter from the wind and the terrible drifting snow.
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