huddled there, as a last hope, to keep the dear, dead master warm,
her great heart riven, hoping where there was no hope.

That night she followed him to herd sheep in a better land. Death
from exposure, Dingley, the vet., gave it; but as little M'Adam, his
eyes dimmer than their wont, declared huskily; "We ken better,
Wullie."

Cyril Gilbraith, a young man not overburdened with emotions, told
with a sob in his voice how, at the terrible Rowan Rock, Jim
Mason had stood, impotent, dumb, big-eyed, watching
Betsy--Betsy, the friend and partner of the last ten years--slipping
over the ice-cold surface, silently appealing to the hand that had
never failed her before--sliding to Eternity.

In the Daleland that winter the endurance o( many a shepherd and
his dog was strained past breaking-point. From the frozen Black
Water to the white-peaked Grammoch Pike two men only, each
always with his shaggy adjutant, never owned defeat; never turned
back; never failed in a thing attempted.

In the following spring, Mr. Tinkerton, the squire's agent, declared
that James Moore and Adam M'Adam--Owd Bob, rather, and Red
Wull--had lost between them fewer sheep than any single farmer
on the whole March Mere Estate-a proud record.

Of the two, many a tale was told that winter. They were invincible,
incomparable; worthy antagonists.

It was Owd Bob who, when he could not drive the band of Black