V.

THE MOURNING OF THE GLEN.


Dr. MacLure was buried during the great snowstorm which is still spoken
of, and will remain the standard of snowfall in Drumtochty for the
century. The snow was deep on the Monday, and the men that gave notice
of his funeral had hard work to reach the doctor's distant patients.
On Tuesday morning it began to fall again in heavy, fleecy flakes, and
continued till Thursday, and then on Thursday the north wind rose and
swept the snow into the hollows of the roads that went to the upland
farms, and built it into a huge bank at the mouth of Glen Urtach, and
laid it across our main roads in drifts of every size and the most
lovely shapes, and filled up crevices in the hills to the depth of fifty
feet.

On Friday morning the wind had sunk to passing gusts that powdered
your coat with white, and the sun was shining on one of those winter
landscapes no townsman can imagine and no countryman ever forgets. The
Glen, from end to end and side to side, was clothed in a glistering
mantle white as no fuller on earth could white it, that flung its skirts
over the clumps of trees and scattered farmhouses, and was only divided
where the Tochty ran with black, swollen stream. The great moor rose and
fell in swelling billows of snow that arched themselves over the burns,
running deep in the mossy ground, and hid the black peat bogs with a
thin, treacherous crust.

[Illustration.]