Serjeant.—Yet it is wonderful how Providence will interfere to preserve people alive, amidst such complicated horrors. I remember a story of a man of the name of Macintosh, who left Braemar, with his wife, to come over this way. A dreadful snow storm came upon them, and, being blinded by the snow-drift, and encumbered in the deep and heavy wreathes, the poor people were separated from each other. The man made his way, with great difficulty, to a whisky bothy, where he arrived much exhausted, and quite inconsolable for the loss of his wife. Being thus saved himself, he procured the assistance of people to help him to look for the corpse of his lost partner. For two whole days they sought in vain; when, just as they were about to abandon their search, till the surface of the ground should become less burdened with snow, they observed a figure coming slowly and wearily down the hill of Gart. This, as it drew nearer, appeared to be a woman; and, on her approaching nearer still, the overjoyed husband discovered that she was his living wife, for whom he had been weeping as dead. She had been wandering for nearly three days, without either food or shelter, amid the mountain snows, but, although she was dreadfully exhausted, she eventually recovered.
Grant.—That was indeed the support of Providence, Archy!
Author.—Most wonderful indeed! Her preservation was little short of a miracle.
Serjeant.—Aye, truly, you may well say that, sir. Nothing but a miracle could have preserved the poor woman from so many perils as she must have encountered in her wanderings,—not to mention those of cold, hunger, and fatigue. It was the hand of Providence, assuredly, that supported her. By what means he worked, we have no opportunity of knowing. But surely it was strange that he could have enabled any human being, and especially a woman, to have come through so much fatigue and suffering alive.
Clifford.—Truly, most miraculous!
Serjeant.—And then, gentlemen, how very strangely—so far as we blind mortals can perceive—are others permitted to perish at the very door, as it were, of help. I think it is now about sixteen years ago—and, if I remember rightly, it was about the Christmas time—that James Stewart, son of the miller of Delnabo, perished, on the very haugh there, just below the House of Inchrory. The poor fellow passed by this place, on his way over to Braemar, one morning that I happened to be here. He stopped a few minutes with me, and had some talk.—“I’m likely to get a fine day for crossing the hill, Archy,” said he.—“Well,” said I, “I hope you will, and I wish you may. Yet I don’t altogether like yon mountaneous heap of white tumbling-looking clouds, that are casting up afar off over the hill-top yonder.”—“They dinna look awthegither weel, to be sure,” said Jemmy; “but I houp I may be in weel kent land lang or they break.”—We parted. The snow came on in a dreadful storm, about mid-day; and I had two or three anxious thoughts about Jemmy Stewart, as the recollection of him was ever and anon brought back to me, during the night, by the fearful whistling of the wind, and the rattling of the hail. Next morning, I, and some of the other men about the place, found a human track, running in a bewildered, irregular, and uncertain line, between the house of Inchrory and the burn yonder, which must be a width of not much more than forty yards. We had not followed this far, when we came to the poor man, whose worn-out feet had made these prints. His walking-stick was standing erect among the snow beside him,—and there lay poor Jemmy Stewart, on his face; his hands were closed, and his head rested on them, just as if he had lain quietly down to sleep. The lads who were with me, stupid gomerills that they were, had a superstitious dread of touching him; but, deeply as I grieved for the poor fellow, I had seen too many dead men in my time to have any such scruples. I accordingly turned him, and found, alas! that he was quite gone. It appeared that he had been suddenly surprised and bewildered by the snow-drift among the hills, and that, having lost all knowledge of his way, he had unconsciously wandered in the very opposite direction to that in which he had intended to go. Becoming more and more confused, as he wandered and wandered, he became at last so entirely stupified by the multiplied terrors of that awful night, that he ultimately yielded to the last drowsiness of death, and so laid himself down to court its fatal repose. Alas! he was unhappily ignorant that he was within a few yards of the friendly house which he had passed on his way upwards on the previous morning, to the reviving shelter of which, the least possible additional exertion might have easily brought him, had he but known in what direction to have made it.
Clifford.—What a sad and fearful story!
Serjeant.—Aye, sir, sad and fearful indeed! Is it not dreadful to think how often the recollection of him crossed my mind during that fatal night, and how little trouble, on my part, would have saved him, had I only known that he was wandering in the snow so near me? Aye, and to think that I should have lain ignorantly all the while in my warm bed, allowing him so cruelly to perish! Willing would I have been to have travelled all night through the drift to have saved poor Jemmy Stewart!
Author.—No one can doubt that, Archy.
Serjeant.—Well, but sir, you see these matters are in the hand of God, and at his wise disposal; and although we, blind moles of the yearth as we are, cannot easily descry why a worthy well-doing young man like Jemmy Stewart should be permitted thus wretchedly to die, without aid, either human or divine, we cannot doubt the justice and wisdom of God’s ways, which are inscrutable, and past man’s finding out. Well, I did all I could for the poor fellow, for I had his corpse carried down to his afflicted father at Delnabo, and I saw him buried at Dounan, near the Bridge of Livat.