190 OUTDOOR STUDIES 
James Hogg at this time belonged to a sort 
of literary society of young shepherds, and had 
set out, the day previous, to walk twenty miles 
over the hills to the place of meeting; but so 
formidable was the look of the sky that he felt 
anxious for his sheep, and finally turned back 
again. There was at that time only a slight 
fall of snow, in thin flakes which seemed uncer- 
tain whether to go up or down; the hills were 
covered with deep folds of frost-fog, and in the 
valleys the same fog seemed dark, dense, and 
as it were crushed together. An old shepherd, 
predicting a storm, bade him watch for a sudden 
opening through this fog, and expect a wind 
from that quarter; yet when he saw such an 
opening suddenly form at midnight (having 
then reached his own home), he thought it alla 
delusion, for the weather had grown milder and 
a thaw seemed setting in. He therefore went 
to bed, and felt no more anxiety for his sheep ; 
yet he lay awake in spite of himself, and at two 
o'clock he heard the storm begin. It smote the 
house suddenly, like a great peal of thunder, — 
something utterly unlike any storm he had ever 
before heard. On his rising and thrusting his 
bare arm through a hole in the roof, it seemed 
precisely as if he had thrust it into a snow-bank, 
so densely was the air filled with falling and 
driving particles. He lay still for an hour, 
