Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume X Part 21

the deep sonorous sound of a well-blown horn fell upon his ears, and roused him to fresh exertions. He had crossed the burn and clambered to the top of the bank before the blast had ceased; and, as he endeavoured to fix the direction of the sound, the horn was again winded. It seemed not to be very distant. Hope invigorated his weary limbs, and he dashed through the opposing wreaths as stoutly as if his toils had been only newly begun. Another blast was blown, and he continued to run upon the sound till it ceased, and it was not again repeated.

He recollected that it was common for the farmers, in many parts of Scotland, to blow a horn at eight o'clock on the winter evenings, for the purpose of warning their servants to attend to the suppering of the horses; and he hoped that, if he could keep to the proper direction, this might lead him to some hospitable farmhouse, where he would soon forget the horrors of the storm before a comfortable fire. He now proceeded more leisurely, striving not to deviate from the course which the horn had induced him to take; and keeping a sharp look-out on all sides, and an intense attention to every sound, in the expectation that some cottage light might twinkle upon his eye, or some human voice reach his ear, in the intervals of the deafening blast. But still he could discover no sight nor sound of man; and the shifting tempest, which attacked him from every direction, soon confounded all his ideas of time and distance. In some places, too, the snow had acc.u.mulated in such immense ma.s.ses, that he could not pa.s.s through them; and the circuits which he was obliged to make tended farther to confuse his mind. His spirits again began to sink, and his limbs to falter; and that sluggish indifference which follows the extinction of hope again took possession of his senses. But, while he was dragging himself onward with slow and feeble steps, a new and extraordinary noise broke upon his ear. He stood still and listened; but he could not conjecture the cause of it. It seemed to mingle with, and yet it was different from, the ravings of the storm. It proceeded from one quarter, and remained steadily in one place. There was a mingling of sounds, like the dashing of waves, the rushing of winds, and the jingling of a thousand little bells, accompanied occasionally by a harsh, guttural cry, like that which is emitted by a band of wild geese when disturbed in their "watery haunt."

Though this mysterious noise was more appalling than attractive, and though it promised neither rest nor shelter to the stranger, yet it operated upon his curiosity, and induced him to continue his exertions.

The terrific sounds grew louder and louder as he advanced. The clouds of snow, which were every moment dashed into his face, prevented him from seeing more than a few yards before him; and an involuntary shudder pa.s.sed over his frame, as he thought that he might even now be toppling upon the brink of some dreadful gulf, and that another step might precipitate him into destruction. Something terrible was certainly at hand; but what was the nature of the danger was beyond his powers of conception.

The unaccountable noise, which was now thundering beneath him, resembled most the dashing of a cataract, or the roaring of the ocean, when its far-acc.u.mulated waves are broken into foaming madness among hidden rocks. He stood still, and gazed intently in the direction of the sound.

The storm abated a little in its violence, and he thought he could perceive a black expanse at a little distance stretching out before him.

He advanced a few steps nearer it. It was tossing in fearful commotion, and here and there streaked with lines, and dotted with patches of white. It was evidently water; but whether lake, river, or ocean, was all a mystery.

"Can it be possible," thought he, "that the storm has insensibly driven me in the right direction? Do I now stand among the rocks that look down upon the breaker-beaten bay of St Andrews? Or have I returned again to the banks of the Tay? Or can this be the little loch which I pa.s.sed in the afternoon, and which then lay stretched out in frozen tranquillity beneath me?"

His heart grew sick and his brain dizzy with conjecture. He turned away from the stunning scene with a shiver of despair. A strange sense of torpidity and madness pa.s.sed along his nerves--it was the confused energy of an active soul, struggling with the numbedness of exhausted nature. The snow seemed to swim around him--his eyes became heavy, and, when he closed them, numberless phantoms seemed to pa.s.s before him, like figures in a dream. In this state of drowsy insensibility, he lost for a time all recollection of his sufferings--his blood began to stagnate in his veins, and the icy coldness of death was stealing over his extremities, when a covey of wild ducks swept past, and their short, sharp cries startled him again into consciousness of his condition. When he opened his eyes, a faint light seemed to be glimmering from a hill-side about a hundred yards above him. It was now seen, and now lost, as the clouds of drift pa.s.sed between him and the place from which it issued. But still it was there; and its dim, shadowy l.u.s.tre was to him like life to the dead. Hope again returned to his heart, and animation to his limbs; and in a few minutes he had reached the window of a little cottage, which was so completely drifted up with snow on all sides save that on which he stood, that any one might have pa.s.sed in broad daylight without supposing it to be a human habitation.

The stranger looked in at the window. The fire, which was composed of peats, had been covered up with ashes to prevent them from wasting through the night; but, by this time, the small dust had pa.s.sed through the grate, and there only remained a little heap of live embers, which cast a sombre glow around the interior of the cottage. The family were in bed. The stranger rapped gently on the window, and then listened for an answer; but nothing stirred. He rapped a little louder, and again listened.

"What's that, Jamie?" said a female voice within.

"Hoch, hoch, hey!" said another, yawning and stretching out his arms from the same box or bed, as if to relieve them from the uneasiness of lying long in one position. It was evident that the voice of the first speaker had awakened the second, without communicating to his mind the purport of the question, which was again repeated.

"What was that Jamie?"

"What was _what_, la.s.sie?" said the wondering husband. "I see naething by ordinar."

"Man," returned the guidwife, "did you no hear yon awfu rattle at the windock? My flesh's a' creepin, for I fear something no canny's aboot the back o' the hoose. It was just like the noise that was heard at w.i.l.l.y Patty's windock last year afore his mither dee'd."

"Havers, la.s.sie; ye've just been dreamin," said the guidman, who was anxious to quiet his partner's fears, though he was not altogether free from some tremours himself.

The stranger gave another rap.

"Hear ye that, then, Jamie?" said the guidwife. "It's no sic a dream, I trow; for that's something awfu."

"Deed is't," said James, who was now convinced that the "rattle" was not quite so terrible as it had been represented; "it's an awfu thing for ony puir body to be oot in sic a nicht as this; but let's be thankfu, Nanny, that we hae a roof to hap oorsels frae the storm, and a door to let a hooseless body in at."

James flung himself around, and disentangled his feet from the bedclothes, with the intention of going immediately to admit the stranger; but, ere he got away from the bedside, his "better half" laid hold of him, and cried out, in great perturbation--

"Stop, Jamie--stop, I beseech ye; and consider weel what ye're aboot; for ye ken that, forby the danger o' robbers and rascals, the evil spirits just delight to range aboot in sic a nicht as this, like roarin lions, seekin wham they may devour; and wha kens what may come owre ye, if ye pit yersel i' their merciment."

"Havers, woman!" said James again; "let me go, I tell ye; for I'll speak at the windock, and spier if he wants shelter, though it war auld Satan himsel."

Nanny relaxed her grasp; but she seemed determined that the guidman should encounter no danger which she did not take a share of; and she too sprung to the floor, and followed him to the window.

"Wha's there?" cried James, in a voice that showed he was neither to be _cowed_ by fiends, fairies, ghosts, nor men.

"A bewildered stranger," was the reply.

"Weel," said James, "a great stranger may be a great villain; but, for a' that, if I understand my Bible richtly, the words, 'I was a stranger and ye took me in,' will never be addressed to ane wha has the hard heart to refuse a hameless wanderer the shelter o' his roof in sic a nicht as this. Sae just gang ye aboot to the t.i.ther side o' the hoose, and come alang the fore wa' a' the gate, till ye find the door, and I'll let ye in."

"Thank you!" said the stranger.

Nanny, who now discovered that the object of all her fears was neither ghost nor goblin, but a conversable and civil creature of her own species, thought that her husband might be safely trusted in his presence without her support; and she accordingly returned again to her bed.

James lighted the lamp, and went to admit the stranger; but, when he opened the door, he opened no pa.s.sage for his entrance. A solid wall of snow still separated the guidman and his intended guest.

"Preserve's a'!" cried the former, "that's been an awfu' nicht, indeed.

The door's drifted up to the lintel; and there's no a hole i' the hale hicht o't, that a mouse could creep oot or in through. Are ye aye there yet, freen?" (addressing the stranger, who answered in the affirmative.) "Aweel, aweel," he continued, "ye maun just content yersel awhile or I get a spade and try and mak some oot-gate in't."

James got a spade, and commenced to delve the snow into the pa.s.sage, between the _hallant_ and the outer door; but he had no sooner broken down a part of the barrier, than the insidious drift entered the aperture, and, getting under his shirt, which was the only garment he had on, it whirled about his bare legs. He persisted for awhile, but his powers of perseverance ultimately forsook him. He flung down the spade, and, as every gust of wind brought a fresh volley of snow whistling about his ankles, he leaped as high as the henroost, which formed the ceiling of the lobby, would permit.

"Preserve's a', that's dreadfu!" he at length cried out, making a most magnificent jump at the same time. "Flesh and bluid canna endure that--it wad gar a horse swither. Ye'll just hae to thole awee till I get my claes on, lad."

James bounded into the house, and commenced immediately to get his shivering limbs conducted into the proper openings of a pair of canvas trousers. But this was no easy task. He had got one foot in, and the other within a few inches of the entrance, when his great toe unluckily got entangled in one of the pockets of the garment, and, as he was striving to preserve his equilibrium, by hopping through the house backwards upon one leg, the stranger, who had forced himself through the aperture which he had made in the doorway, entered like a moving ma.s.s of snow. James at length succeeded, by the support of the bed, which happily resisted his retrograde movement, in getting on his clothes; and then all his attention was directed to the comfort of his guest.

"Dear me, man," said he, taking hold of the stranger's arm with the one hand, and a broom with the other, "ye'll need hauf-an-hoor's soopin afore we get a sicht o' ye. I'm sure ye're unco far frae comfortable below that wread o' snaw."

As the stranger was standing before the fire, while James was endeavouring to clear away the snow from his neck and shoulder, the sudden change of temperature which he had experienced, expanding the fluids faster than the vessels which contained them, produced in his extremities that agonising sensation which is more forcibly expressed by the Scottish word _dinnling_, than by any other word with which we are acquainted. Sickness and pain overpowered his exhausted nerves. His eyes turned wildly up to the roof of the cottage. He gave one suffocating gasp for breath, and sank senseless upon the floor. James seized him in his arms, and called out to his wife--

"O Nanny, Nanny, woman! get up and help's here! The puir callant's fa'en into a drow, and I'm feared he's gaun to dee upon our hands athegither.

Get up, woman, and let's try if onything can be dune to bring him aboot again."

Nanny sprang up at the call of her husband; and, seizing the stranger by the hand, cried out--

"Preserve us a', Jamie! he's perfectly perishin'; his hand is as cauld and stiff as the poker. I maun get on the kettle and heat some water to thaw the snaw aff him."

"Na, na," cried James, "that wad mak him waur, woman. Rin ye to the door and get a gowpen o' snaw, and rub his hands wi' _it_ and a rough clout time aboot, and sprinkle some cauld water in his face, and he'll may be sune come till himsel again."

"Jamie," said the guidwife, in a tone of gentle remonstrance, "the lad's gotten owre muckle snaw and cauld water already; that's just what's the matter wi' him. I maun hae up the fire and get something warm till 'im."

"Ye're haverin, Nanny," said James, who was too much agitated to be respectful. "Gang ye and get the snaw, I tell ye; for ye understand naething o' the matter."

"Aweel, aweel, then," said Nanny, "ye hae mair skill o' doctory than me, Jamie; but it's a very unnatural-like cure, to rub cauld snaw on a man perishin' wi' the cauld."

Nanny got the snow, and commenced the operation with great activity, while James reached his hand to a pitcher which was standing near, and sprinkled a few drops of water in the stranger's face. He soon began to show some symptoms of returning animation, and James earnestly inquired--

"How are ye yet? Are ye better noo?"

After a considerable pause, the stranger replied, as if the question had only then reached him--

"I'm better now, I thank you!"

"G.o.d be praised that it's sae!" said James. "Gie him a drink, Nanny, woman, and he'll be a' richt in a wee again."

Nanny brought some water, and, while she was endeavouring to pour it into the stranger's mouth, James got a full view of his face, and cried out--

"He's the very young gentleman that I cam doon the hill wi' this afternoon. Dear me, what a nicht he's had, wanderin amang the drift sin yon time!"

"He's a bonny laddie at ony rate," said Nanny, looking close into his face, "Ye'll no grudge to let him get some heat noo, Jamie. Help me aff wi' his coat and his shoon; and we'll just coup him inowre in oor ain warm bed, here."