Scotland/Scots > Reminiscences of a Highland parish

168
A HIGHLAND PARISH.
“great May storm.” The wildest day of winter
never saw snowflakes falling faster, or whirling
with more fury through the mountain-pass, fill¬
ing every hollow and whitening every rock!
Little anxiety about the widow was felt by
the villagers, as many ways were pointed out by
which she might have escaped the fury of the
storm. She could have halted at the steading
of this farmer, or the shieling of that shepherd,
before it had become dangerous to cross the hill.
But early in the morning of the succeeding day
they were alarmed to hear from a person who
had come from the place to which the widow
was travelling, that she had not made her ap¬
pearance there.
In a short time about a dozen men mustered to
search for the missing woman. At each house
on the track they heard with increasing fear that
she had been seen pursuing her journey the day
before. The shepherd on the mountain could
give no information regarding her. Beyond his
hut there was no shelter; nothing but deep snow;
and between the range of rocks, at the summit of
the pass, the drift lay thickest. There the storm