The gray dog it was who found Cyril Gilbraith by the White Stones, with
a cigarette and a sprained ankle, on the night the whole village was out
with lanterns searching for the well-loved young scapegrace. It was the
Tailless Tyke and his master who one bitter evening came upon little
Mrs. Burton, lying in a huddle beneath the lea of the fast-whitening
Druid's Pillar with her latest baby on her breast. It was little M'Adam
who took off his coat and wrapped the child in it; little M'Adam who
unwound his plaid, threw it like a breastband across the dog's great
chest, and tied the ends round the weary woman's waist. Red Wull it was
who dragged her back to the Sylvester Arms and life, straining like a
giant through the snow, while his master staggered behind with the babe
in his arms. When they reached the inn it was M'Adam who, with a smile
on his face, told the landlord what he thought of him for sending _his_
wife across the Marches on such a day and on his errand. To which: “I'd
a cauld,” pleaded honest Jem.
For days together David could not cross the Stony Bottom to Kenmuir.
His enforced confinement to the Grange led, however, to no more frequent
collisions than usual with his father. For M'Adam and Red Wull were out,
at all hours, in all weathers, night and day, toiling at their work of
salvation.
At last, one afternoon, David managed to cross the Bottom at a point
where a fallen thorn-tree gave him a bridge over the soft snow. He
stayed but a little while at Kenmuir, yet when he started for home it
was snowing again.
By the time he had crossed the ice-draped bridge over the Wastrel, a
blizzard was raging. The wind roared past him, smiting him so that he
could barely stand; and the snow leaped at him so that he could not see.
But he held on doggedly; slipping, sliding, tripping, down and up
again, with one arm shielding his face. On, on, into the white darkness,
blindly on sobbing, stumbling, dazed.
At length, nigh dead, he reached the brink of the Stony Bottom. He
looked up and he looked down, but nowhere in that blinding mist could he
see the fallen thorn-tree. He took a step forward into the white morass,
and 'sank up to his thigh. He struggled feebly to free himself, and sank
deeper. The snow wreathed, twisting, round him like a white flame, and
he collapsed, softly crying, on that soft bed.
“I canna--I canna!” he moaned.
* * * * *
Little Mrs. Moore, her face whiter and frailer than ever, stood at the
window, looking out into the storm.
“I canna rest for thinkin' o' th' lad,” she said. Then, turning, she saw
her husband, his fur cap down over his ears, buttoning his pilot-coat
about his throat, while Owd Bob stood at his feet, waiting.
“Ye're no goin', James?” she asked, anxiously.
“But I am, lass,” he answered; and she knew him too well to say more.
So those two went quietly out to save life or lose it, nor counted the
cost.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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