and of a different shade of white. The road here is, in summer, but a track, and now it was quite covered, and I sunk to the knee every step. As I came on, I had a view of the glen for some miles before me. I saw shepherd's houses at great distances apart, but there was neither cow, nor goat, nor sheep, nor shepherd, nor any living thing. It was indeed deserted and desolate-like. Sometimes I observed the drift rise from the peaks of the mountains, carried upwards by sudden gusts of wind, and appearing like streams of smoke, upon which the sun shining, gave it a glaring and dazzling brightness; while descending into the deep calm valley, it fell in a flickering shower.

When I came in sight of Glen Guis, with its narrow loch and the old scattered fir wood above it, along the base of Mam Torchal, I cannot wish you had been with me, but neither can I help wishing you had seen it as I did. The loch was calm as a mirror, and though the tops of the old fir trees were still covered, and their tall trunks encrusted by the last night's snow, yet, when they were reflected on the loch, it seemed as if it had been all over spotted with small black clouds. I cannot tell you how it should have happened, but when I saw this strange appearance, when all around was deadly white, and no living creature to be seen, I thought the shepherds had all perished with the sheep; and imagined that the horrors of the second sight had been coming over my mind, and that I had got a view of the valley of the shadow of death. I thought I should never see the Black Isle, or Dalsarren Wood more. When I considered afterwards these dark shadows, while the trees were mostly covered with snow, I perceived, that although the upperside of the broad and close foliage of the firs was no doubt covered white, yet, to any person who might have been on the loch below them, in a boat, they must have appeared black; for he could only have seen the under sides of the branches as he looked up towards the mountain.

About an hour after I had passed the opening of Glen Guis, I came to a shepherd's house on a little plain, by the side of the rivulet. All around the cottage the ground was covered with boards of ice, and, although it appeared to be without the

reach of any ordinary flood, yet, as it was nearer to the level of the water than was quite prudent, I concluded it to be the shiel of some Sassenach, or south country shepherd; and, as no dog came out to bark at me, I could have thought they had been all drowned, only that a slight smoke was issuing from it.

Before I had entered the door, I knew I had guessed rightly; but a young Highland lad was sleeping by the fire with his elbows on his knees. A pair of bag-pipes lay on a stool beside him, on which he had probably been playing until he was weary of listening alone to his own music.

"What do you here," said I, "alone in the dwelling of the stranger?" "The strangers are fled to the strath, and to the sea," said the lad; "for their flocks were perishing in Glen Fruive. He loves to see the snow disappear on the mountain, but he knew not that his children were in danger." "I asked if they were drowned in the flood?" He said, "that their mother fled with the children from the waters, but she had to leave them dying on the snow."

He told me he had been assisting the shepherds in getting the sheep removed to the low country, when it was found that they could exist no longer upon the mountains; and he had been sent back with a supply of meal to his uncle's family, who lived in a cottage about two miles farther down the glen. The day that he arrived, it came fresh, with wind and rain, which continued all night. The snow began to melt half way up the mountains, the streams were much swollen, and the roar of them through the darkness was dreadful. An old woman, a relation of his aunt's, went often out, and stood in the door of the cottage, as if compelled to listen to what struck her with awe and terror, and she several times asserted, that she saw a dead light, and heard cries of distress. Next morning he was preparing to return to the low country, when a woman with an infant in her arms entered the cottage. She was hurried, and looked alarmed and wild, and dropping on her knees, held out her child, "Oh! take that bairn and warm him!" she said, "he is all that I have now!" and as one of the women caught hold of the child, its mo◄ ther fainted upon the floor. When

she recovered, and saw the lad, she called out with frightful eagerness, "O run! O run! they were still breathing when I left them, but they could not speak to me, they will never speak to me more!" and she again fainted upon the floor.

"It is her children she means, Duncan," cried the old woman, "she has other two, she has left them to procure help; they must be some where in danger, follow her tract among the snow, and we will take care of her."

Duncan caught the thoughts of the old woman: He recognised the stranger to be the shepherd's wife at Corry Bay, and rushed from the house. As he followed her track, he observed she had often fallen, from her hurry to obtain assistance to her dying children, and once, where she had fallen, he noticed the print of the infant's face upon the snow.

On approaching the house, he was astonished to see it surrounded by the river. There had been an ice flood, it appeared, and it had stopped opposite the house, and formed a dam, by which the water was raised many feet above the usual course. Duncan instantly saw, as he thought, the cause of alarm, and, disregarding the woman's track, he ran towards the cottage, never doubting that he would find the children, whom he was surprised their mother had not been able to remove. When he entered the house, the water was still a foot deep on the floor; but he could not find the children. Some clothes were floating about, and a tame duck; and a weak sheep, that had been brought into the house to be fed by the children, and made a pet of, was lying drowned near the fire-place; but Duncan could nowhere discover the poor children. He now cursed himself and the old woman, as the cause of his heedless haste, and, with deep regret, saw he would most likely have to return to their mother for information.

As he gained the dry ground, he again came upon the woman's track. It had been as she fled from the house; for Duncan soon observed the print of the little foot, and the short steps of a child. By following this a little way, he came to the children, lying in a hole that their mother had dug for them with her hands, in a large wreath of snow, that they might be somewhat

sheltered from the wind and driving rain. They were wrapped in a blanket, and apparently asleep. The oldest girl had taken her young sister in her arms, but the grasp had become gradually more feeble, and the little creature had rolled away, and its face was turned towards the snow. He felt their faces, their hands, and limbs, but they were cold and stiff. Duncan took them gently in his arms, and soon observed that one of them still breathed, and that the body of the other still retained warmth. His first thought was, that of getting the children to the house and kindling a fire, but he remembered it was filled with water. He then resolved to carry them to their mother, but his uncle's cottage was two miles off, and could there be the least hope of reviving the children, life would undoubtedly have become extinct before they could be carried so far. He therefore took them to the house, full of water as it was, that they might in the meantime be out of the cold wind, although all hope seemed to depart as he again waded to the house.

But he had once been a night there, and he recollected that he slept in a bed upon a kind of loft that the shepherd had constructed of spars and turf, and, upon ascending a ladder with the children still in his arms, he was overjoyed to find a bed, with plenty of blankets. He lost no time in stripping off their wet clothes, put them in the bed, and laying himself down beside them, continued to rub them alternately for more than an hour; and, as he confessed, often weeping like a child himself, from his anxiety that they should recover, and regret, that, as he thought, he could do so little for them.

Although the younger one shewed at first least signs of life, yet she recovered first, which Duncan thought was owing to his bestowing upon her greater attention. He gave a long and particular description of the gradual recovery of the children to a state of animation; for he had been strongly affected by the situation in which he had found them. He had been observing that the water had receded from the floor: and so soon as he thought the mutual warmth of the children would prevent them from relapsing, he wrapped them up together and left them; got some peats that had been without reach of the water, struck a light, and

soon kindled a good fire, at which he warmed the children. In a little time they began to talk, and then cry, and call upon their mother, and complain of hunger. This, Duncan said, distressed him greatly, for he had heard of people recovering from the effects of cold and hunger, who had died afterwards in consequence of taking food. In the midst of his perplexity, he recollected the cow; and putting the children again to bed, he soon brought them some warm milk, which revived them greatly. He likewise discovered the meal quite safe, and so was enabled to provide food both for them and himself, during two days, before I came so providentially to his aid.

It had not yet been in his power to inform the distressed mother that her children were still alive. Duncan now left his little charge with me, and went to fulfil this pleasant part of his duty.

He returned in about two hours. Their mother, he said, had been very ill; and although the account of the safety of her children lightened her heart, yet her feet and legs were greatly swelled, and she was quite unable to walk.

She told Duncan, that when her husband had to go with his flock to the low country, and leave her alone with the three infant children, she felt very lowly at any rate; and when the wind came to rage with such violence, accompanied with thunder and lightning, the dreadful noise of the ice flood, when it dammed up and made the water flow over the haugh, and

into the house, so terrified her, that she imagined there was no chance of saving the lives of the children, except by flying from the house, which she very soon bitterly repented. For while she waded through the flood, carrying the two youngest children wrapped in part of the bed clothes, and leading the other in her hand, the masses of frozen snow and boards of ice struck upon her legs, and endangered her being overturned in the water, and very much hurt the child; and, besides, the rain soon wet them all through, and from the first, she had great fear that the children could not live until the morning. She could not pretend & describe her situation during the night, only she recollected that the children cried incessantly from the cold, and their voices became gradually weaker, until they ceased altogether. And after she left them lying speechless in the snow, she could recollect nothing more until she arrived at his uncle's cottage.

Duncan had the foresight to bring with him a bottle of whisky (for the sassenach shepherd had positively no such thing in his house), and he put his pipes in tune, and, with the one and the other, we passed away a good part of the night.

I was altogether so much pleased with honest Duncan, that, had it not been necessary for me to find out the father of this distressed family on my way home, and tell him of the misfortune that had befallen his wife and children, I would have left Glen Fruive as happy as the laird himself.