Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 705, June 30, 1877

Various

Various

Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 705, June 30, 1877

FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH

The fire burns cheerily on the hearth, the great logs crackle and flare up the wide chimney, up which it is my wont to say you could drive a coach-and-four. I draw my chair nearer to it with a shiver. 'What a night!' I say.

'Is it still snowing?' asks my wife, who sits opposite to me, her books and work on the table beside her.

'Fast. You can scarcely see a yard before you.'

'Heaven help any poor creature on the moor to-night!' says she.

'Who would venture out? It began snowing before dark, and all the people about know the danger of being benighted on the moor in a snow-storm.'

'Yes. But I have known people frozen to death hereabouts before now.'

My wife is Scotch, and this pleasant house in the Highlands is hers. We are trying a winter in it for the first time, and I find it excessively cold and somewhat dull. Mentally I decide that in future we will only grace it with our presence during the shooting season. Presently I go to the window and look out; it has ceased snowing, and through a rift in the clouds I see a star.

'It is beginning to clear,' I tell my wife, and also inform her that it is past eleven. As she lights her candle at a side-table I hear a whining and scratching at the front-door.

'There is Laddie loose again,' says she. 'Would you let him in, dear?'

I did not like facing the cold wind, but could not refuse to let in the poor animal. Strangely enough, when I opened the door and called him, he wouldn't come. He runs up to the door and looks into my face with dumb entreaty; then he runs back a few steps, looking round to see if I am following; and finally, he takes my coat in his mouth and tries to draw me out.

'Laddie won't come in,' I call out to my wife. 'On the contrary, he seems to want me to go out and have a game of snow-ball with him.'

She throws a shawl round her and comes to the door. The collie was hers before we were married, and she is almost as fond of him, I tell her, as she is of Jack, our eldest boy.

'Laddie, Laddie!' she calls; 'come in, sir.' He comes obediently at her call, but refuses to enter the house, and pursues the same dumb pantomime he has already tried on me.

'I shall shut him out, Jessie,' I say. 'A night in the snow won't hurt him;' and I prepare to close the door.

'You will do nothing of the kind!' she replies with an anxious look; 'but you will rouse the servants at once, and follow him. Some one is lost in the snow, and Laddie knows it.'

I laugh. 'Really, Jessie, you are absurd. Laddie is a sagacious animal, no doubt, but I cannot believe he is as clever as that. How can he possibly know whether any one is lost in the snow, or not?'

'Because he has found them, and come back to us for help. Look at him now.'

I cannot but own that the dog seems restless and uneasy, and is evidently endeavouring to coax us to follow him; he looks at us with pathetic entreaty in his eloquent eyes. 'Why won't you believe me?' he seems to ask.

'Come,' she continues; 'you know you could not rest while there was a possibility of a fellow-creature wanting your assistance. And I am certain Laddie is not deceiving us.'

What is a poor hen-pecked man to do? I grumble and resist and yield; as I have often grumbled and resisted and yielded before, and as I doubtless often shall again.

'Laddie once found a man in the snow before, but he was dead,' Jessie says, as she hurries off to fill a flask with brandy, and get ready some blankets for us to take with us. In the meantime I rouse the servants. They are all English, with the exception of Donald the gardener, and I can see that they are scoffingly sceptical of Laddie's sagacity, and inwardly disgusted at having to turn out of their warm beds and face the bitter winter's night.

'Dinna trouble yersels,' I hear old Donald say. 'The mistress is right eneugh. Auld Laddi