the Scaur and Muir Pike raised hoary heads against the frosty blue.
It was the season still remembered in the North as the White
Winter--the worst, they say, since the famous i8o8.

For days together Jim Mason was stuck with his bags in the
Dalesman's Daughter, and there was no communication between
the two Dales. On the Mere Marches the snow massed deep and
impassable in thick, billowy drifts. In the Devil's Bowl men said it
lay piled some score feet deep. And sheep, seeking shelter in the
ghylls and protected spots, were buried and lost in their hundreds.

That is the time to test the hearts of shepherds and sheep-dogs,
when the wind runs ice-cold across the waste of white, and the low
woods on the upland walks shiver black through a veil of snow,
and sheep must be found and folded or lost: a trial of head as well
as heart, of resource as well as resolution.

In that winter more than one man and many a dog lost his life in
the quiet performance of his duty, gliding to death over the
slippery snow-shelves, or overwhelmed beneath an avalanche of
the warm, suffocating white: "smoored," as they call it. Many a
deed was done, many a death died, recorded only in that Book
which holds the names of those--men or animals, souls or no
souls--who tried.

They found old Wrottesley, the squire's head shepherd, lying one
morning at Gill's foot, like a statue in its white bed, the snow
gently blowing about the venerable face, calm and beautiful in
death. And stretched upon his bosom, her master's hands blue, and
stiff, still clasped about her neck, his old dog Jess. She had