, as they sauntered homeward these young
people found that an old shepherd, named Walter Blake, had driven his
entire flock of sheep into a sheltered position by the side of a wood,
near the road. Now, Blake was a deeply religious man, one to whom the
Sabbath was in the strictest sense a holy day, a day too sacred to be
broken in any fashion whatever, except for some extraordinarily powerful
reason. On being asked how it came to pass that he was found thus
following his worldly vocation, to the neglect of church-going, he said
that in the morning he had seen to the northward so ill-looking a
"weather-gaw" that he was convinced a heavy storm was coming, and that
probably before morning there would be a dangerous drift. The young men
laughed the old one to scorn. A snowstorm! The auld man was daft! Why,
the air was like June; no sensible body would even so much as dream of
snow.

"Belike we'll be up to oor oxters in snaw, the morn, Wattie," chirrupped
one damsel, in the bicker of rustic wit and empty laughter that flew
around.

"Weel, weel, lads! Time will show. Let them laugh that win," said old
Wattie.

That night there came a sudden shift of wind, and ere morning the
country-side was smothered in snow. Twenty thousand sheep perished, and
none but old Walter Blake came out of that storm free from loss.

The years 1709, 1740, and 1772 were all notable for unusually heavy
falls of snow. In the latter year the country was snow-clad from
mid-December till well on in April, and the loss of sheep was very
great, chiefly because partial thaws, occurring at intervals, encouraged
hill farmers to believe each time that the back of the winter was
broken. Hence, they delayed too long in shifting their sheep to lower
lands, and when the imperative necessity of removal at length became
obvious, if life were to be saved, it was too late; from sheer weakness
the poor animals were unable to travel.

Then came that terrible storm of 1794, a calamity that old men of our
own day may yet remember to have heard talked about by eye-witnesses of
the scenes they described. Nothing in nature ever wrought such havoc in
the Border. Seventeen shepherds perished in the endeavour to rescue
their flocks; no less than thirty others, overwhelmed by the intense
cold, the fury of the gale, and the blinding, choking whirlwind of snow,
dropped and lay unconscious, to all intents dead, sleeping the dreamless
sleep of those whom King Frost slays with hi