“It’s the boddach of Drontheim,” falters the shepherd, trembling like an aspen leaf. “It’s the boddach, to be surely, och! and och! What will become of us whatsomever?”
“Silence, Donald, silence?” cries McBain, as the strange sound falls once more on their listening ears. “Where is Oscar? Not here? Why, it is he! Come, men! Come, Allan, for, dead or alive, your friends are down yonder.”
They follow the footprints of the noble dog, although they are hardly visible, but Kooran, the collie, takes up the scent and does excellent service. So down the steep and craggy hill they rush, often stumbling, sometimes falling, but still going bravely on, and cheering Oscar with their voices as they run. At the foot at last, and on level ground, they hasten forward, welcomed by the Saint Bernard to a spot where lie two inanimate human forms, partly hidden by the lightly drifting snow.
Dead? No, thank Heaven! they are not dead, and what joy for Allan McGregor, when stalwart Ralph sits up, rubs his eyes, and gazes vacantly and wildly around him.
“Drink,” says McBain, holding a flask to his lips. The young Englishman swallows a mouthful almost mechanically, then staggers to his feet Allan and McBain steady him by the arms till he comes a little more to himself.
“Ralph, old fellow,” says Allan, “don’t you know me?”
“Yes, yes,” he mutters, hardly yet sensible of his surroundings, “I remember all now. Rory—the cliff—I could not raise him—sleep stole my senses away. But we are saved, are we not, and by you, good Allan, and by you strangers? But see to Rory, see to Rory.”
McBain was chafing Rory’s hands, and rubbing his half-frozen limbs.
“No,” he said, “not saved by us. You have Providence to thank, and yonder brave dog. Had he not found you, the sleep that had overcome you would have been your last.”
It was a long time, and it seemed doubly long to Allan and Ralph, ere Rory showed the slightest signs of returning life. At length, however, the blood began to trickle slowly from a wound he had received in the forehead in his fall over the cliff, and next moment he sighed deeply, then opened his eyes.