'Dinna trouble yersels,' I hear old Donald say. 'The mistress is right eneugh. Auld Laddie is cleverer than mony a Christian, and will find something in the snaw this night.'
'Don't sit up, Jessie,' I say as we start; 'we may be out half the night on this wild-goose chase.'
'Follow Laddie closely,' is the only answer she makes.
The dog springs forward with a joyous bark, constantly looking back to see if we are following. As we pass through the avenue gates and emerge on to the moor, the moon struggles for a moment through the driving clouds, and lights up with a sickly gleam the snow-clad country before us. 'It's like looking for a needle in a bundle of hay, sir,' says John the coachman confidentially, 'to think as we should find anybody on such a night as this! Why, in some places the snow is more than a couple o' feet thick, and it goes again' reason to think that a dumb animal would have the sense to come home and fetch help.'
'Bide a wee, bide a wee,' says old Donald. 'I dinna ken what your English dugs can do; but a collie, though it hasna been pleasing to Providence to give the creatur the gift o' speech, can do mony mair things than them that wad deride it.'
'I ain't a deridin' of 'em,' says John. 'I only say as how if they be so very clever, I've never seen it.'
'Ye wull, though, ye wull,' says old Donald, as he hurries forward after Laddie, who has now settled down into a swinging trot, and is taking his way straight across the loneliest part of the bleak moor. The cold wind almost cuts us in two, and whirls the snow into our faces, nearly blinding us. My finger-tips are becoming numbed, icicles hang from my moustache and beard, and my feet and legs are soaking wet, even through my shooting-boots and stout leather leggings.
The moon has gone in again, and the light from the lantern we carry is barely sufficient to shew us the inequalities in the height of the snow, by which we are guessing at our path. I begin to wish I had staid at home. 'L'homme propose, mais la femme dispose,' I sigh to myself; and I begin to consider whether I may venture to give up the search (which I have undertaken purely to satisfy my wife, for I am like John, and won't believe in Laddie), when suddenly I hear a shout in front of me, and see Donald, who has all the time been keeping close to Laddie, drop on his knees and begin digging wildly in the snow with his hands. We all rush forward. Laddie has stopped at what appears to be the foot of a stunted tree, and after scratching and whining for a moment, sits down and watches, leaving the rest to us. What is it that appears when we have shovelled away the snow? A dark object. Is it a bundle of rags? Is it—or alas! was it a human being? We raise it carefully and tenderly, and wrap it in one of the warm blankets with which my wife's forethought has provided us. 'Bring the lantern,' I say huskily; and John holds it over the prostrate form of, not as we might have expected, some stalwart shepherd of the hills, but over that of a poor shrivelled, wrinkled, ragged old woman. I try to pour a little brandy down the poor old throat, but the teeth are so firmly clenched that I cannot.
'Best get her home as quickly as may be, sir; the mistress will know better what to do for her nor we do, if so be the poor creature is not past help,' says John, turning instinctively, as we all do in sickness or trouble, to woman's aid.
So we improvise a sort of hammock of the blankets, and gently and tenderly the men prepare to carry their poor helpless burden over the snow.