d past him, smiting him so that he
could barely stand; and the snow leaped at him so that he could not see.
But he held on doggedly; slipping, sliding, tripping, down and up
again, with one arm shielding his face. On, on, into the white darkness,
blindly on sobbing, stumbling, dazed.

At length, nigh dead, he reached the brink of the Stony Bottom. He
looked up and he looked down, but nowhere in that blinding mist could he
see the fallen thorn-tree. He took a step forward into the white morass,
and 'sank up to his thigh. He struggled feebly to free himself, and sank
deeper. The snow wreathed, twisting, round him like a white flame, and
he collapsed, softly crying, on that soft bed.

"I canna--I canna!" he moaned.

* * * * *

Little Mrs. Moore, her face whiter and frailer than ever, stood at the
window, looking out into the storm.

"I canna rest for thinkin' o' th' lad," she said. Then, turning, she saw
her husband, his fur cap down over his ears, buttoning his pilot-coat
about his throat, while Owd Bob stood at his feet, waiting.

"Ye're no goin', James?" she asked, anxiously.

"But I am, lass," he answered; and she knew him too well to say more.

So those two went quietly out to save life or lose it, nor counted the
cost.

Down a wind-shattered slope--over a spar of ice--up an eternal hill--a
forlorn hope.

In a whirlwind chaos of snow, the tempest storming at them, the white
earth lashing them, they fought a good fight. In front, Owd Bob, the
snow clogging his shaggy coat, his hair cutting like lashes of steel
across eyes, his head lowered as he followed the finger of God; and
close behind, James Moore, his back stern against the storm, stalwart
still, yet swaying like a tree before the wind.

So they battled through to the brink of the Stony Bottom--only to arrive
too late.

For, just as the Master peering about him, had caught sight of a
shapeless lump lying motionless in front, there loomed across the
snow-choked gulf through the white riot of the storm a gigantic figure
forging, doggedly forward, his great head down to meet the hurricane.
And close behind, buffeted and bruised, stiff and staggering, a little
dauntless figure holding stubbornly on, clutching with one hand at the
gale; and a shrill voice, whirled away on the trumpet tones of the wind,
crying:

'Noo, Wullie, wi' me!
Scots wha' hae wi' Wallace bled!
Scots wham Bruce has often led!
We