THE CHEVIOT BREED. Ill 



water, and began to dread that, in spite of my supposed ac- 

 curacy, I had gone wrong. This greatly surprised me, and 

 standing still to consider, I looked up towards Heaven, I 

 shall not say for what cause, and to my utter amazement 

 thought I beheld trees over my head, nourishing abroad over 

 the whole sky. I never had seen such an optical delusion 

 before ; it was so like enchantment that I knew not what to 

 think, but dreaded that some extraordinary thing was coming 

 over me, and that I was deprived of my right senses. I con- 

 cluded that the storm was a great judgment sent on us for 

 our sins, and that this strange phantasy was connected with 

 it, an illusion effected by evil spirits. I stood a good while 

 in this painful trance ; but at length, on making a bold ex- 

 ertion to escape from the fairy vision, I came all at once in 

 contact with the Old Tower. Never in my life did I expe- 

 rience such a relief; I was not only all at once freed from 

 the fairies, but from the dangers of the gorged river. I had 

 come over it on some mountain of snow, I knew not how nor 

 where, nor do I know to this day. So that, after all, what I 

 had seen were trees, and trees of no great magnitude neither ; 

 but their appearance to my eyes it is impossible to describe. 

 I thought they flourished abroad, not for miles, but for hun- 

 dreds of miles, to the utmost verges of the visible heavens. 

 Such a day and such a night may the eye of a shepherd never 

 again behold!" 



No apology can be due for extracting those passages. 

 Had the author never written more than his account of the 

 storms of Etterick, he would deserve to be remembered. 

 Even if we shall imagine that a little fancy has been mixed 

 with the reality of the story, we must feel that the Shepherd 

 Boy had really mingled in the scenes which he lived to paint 

 so well. One passage more is worthy of note. It refers to 

 a faculty known to be possessed by the Dogs of these moun- 

 tains, of discovering the Sheep which have been buried be- 

 neath the snow. We know that a similar instinct of the 



