by his side. Yes, Donald will go with you to the end of the world if you’ll want him. Wait till I get my crook; to be surely I’ll go.”

Donald disappeared as he spoke, but after about a minute he joined our friends, and they journeyed on together.

“It will be an awful night, to be surely,” said Donald, “and troth, it is more than likely the two English bodies are dead, or drowned, or frozen by this time. An’ och! it’s a blessing they are only English bodies.”

Such a speech as this did not tend to reassure young Allan. In very truth it almost quenched the hopes that were beginning to rise in his heart.

Donald was now their guide, and they were not surprised to observe that before very long he deserted the main road entirely, for a steep and craggy path that led downwards towards the distant lake. Along this narrow footway Donald bounded along with almost the speed of a red deer. Nor were Allan and his trusty companions slow to follow, for all felt how precious were the few minutes of daylight that were left to them.

And now the shepherd stops, removes his cap, and, passing his fingers through his hair in a puzzled kind of manner, stares around him in some surprise.

“Yes, yes,” he says at last; “this is the place, to be surely, but I don’t see a sign of the English bodies whatsomever.”

But if he does not, Allan McGregor, quicker of eye, does. He springs lightly forward, and picks something up that lies half-buried among the snow.

“It is Rory’s sketch-book,” he says, “Alas! poor Rory.”

But what is that mournful wail that now rises up towards them, apparently from the very bosom of the dark lake itself?

“It’s the boddach of Drontheim,” falters the shepherd, trembling like an aspen leaf. “It’s the boddach, to be surely, och! and och! What will become of us whatsomever?”

“Silence, Donald, silence?” cries McBain, as the strange sound falls once more on their listening ears. “Where is Oscar? Not here? Why, it is he! Come, men! Come, Allan, for, dead or alive, your friends are down yonder.”

They follow the footprints of the noble dog, although they are hardly visible, but Kooran, the collie, takes up the scent and does excellent service. So down the steep and craggy hill they rush, often stumbling, sometimes falling, but still going bravely on, and cheering Oscar with their voices as they run. At the foot at last, and on level ground, they hasten forward, welcomed by the Saint Bernard to a spot where lie two inanimate human forms, partly hidden by the lightly drifting snow.

Dead? No, thank Heaven! they are not dead, and what joy for Allan McGregor, when stalwart Ralph sits up, rubs his eyes, and gazes vacantly and wildly around him.

“Drink,” says McBain, holding a flask to his lips. The young Englishman swallows a mouthful almost mechanically, then staggers to his feet Allan and McBain steady him by the arms till he comes a little more to himself.

“Ralph, old fellow,” says Allan, “don’t you know me?”

“Yes, yes,” he mutters, hardly yet sensible of his surroundings, “I remember all now. Rory—the cliff—I could not raise him—sleep stole my senses away. But we are saved, are we not, and by you, good Allan, and by you strangers? But see to Rory, see to Rory.”

McBain was chafing Rory’s hands, and rubbing his half-frozen limbs.

“No,” he said, “not saved by us. You have Providence to thank, and yonder brave dog. Had he not found you, the sleep that had overcome you would have been your last.”

It was a long time, and it seemed doubly long to Allan and Ralph, ere Rory showed the slightest signs of returning life. At length, however, the blood began to trickle slowly from a wound he had received in the forehead in his fall over the cliff, and next moment he sighed deeply, then opened his eyes.

“God be praised?” said McBain, fervently; “and now, my friends, let us carry him.”

This was very easily done, for Rory was a light weight. So with Donald in front, and the dogs capering and barking all around them, the party commenced the ascent, and half-an-hour afterwards they were safe at the shepherd’s hut. And none too soon, for night was now over all the land, and the snow fell thick and fast.

Rory was laid upon the shepherd’s dais, and Allan and Donald proposed moving it close to the fire. But McBain knew better.

“No, no, no!” he cried, “leave him where he is. Never take a frozen man near the fire. I learned that at Spitzbergen. He has young blood in his veins, and will soon come round.”

But Rory, for a time, lay quiet enough. He was very white too, and but for his regular and uninterrupted breathing, and the tinge of red in his lips, one might have thought him dead.

“Poor little Rory!” said Allan, smoothing his dark hair from off his brow. “How cold his forehead is!”

Very simple words these were, yet there was something in the very tone in which they were uttered that would have convinced even a stranger, that Allan McGregor bore for the youth before him quite a brother’s love.

And who was Rory, and who was Ralph? These questions are very soon answered. Roderick Elphinston and Ralph Leigh were, or had been, students at the University of Cambridge. They had been “inseparables” all through the curriculum, and firm friends from the very first day they had met together. And yet in appearance, and indeed in character, they were entirely different. Ralph was a great broad-shouldered, pleasant-faced young Saxon Rory was small as to stature, but lithe and wiry in the extreme; his face was always somewhat pale, but his eyes had all the glitter and fire of a wild cat in them. Well, then, if you do not like the “wild cat,” I shall say “poet”—the glitter and fire of a poet. And a poet he was, though he seldom wrote verses. Oh! it is not always the verses one writes that prove him to be a poet. Very often it is just the reverse. I know a young man who has written more verses than would stretch from Reading to Hyde Park, and there is just as much poetry in that young man’s soul as there is in the flagstaff on my lawn yonder. But Rory’s soul was filled with life and imagination, a gladsome glowing life that could not be restrained, but that burst upwards like a fountain in the sunlight, giving joy to all around. Everything in nature was understood and loved by Rory, and everything in nature seemed to love him in return; the birds and beasts made a confidant of him, and the very trees and the tenderest flowerets in garden or field seemed to whisper to him and tell him all their secrets. And just because he was so full of life he was also full of fun.

When silent and thinking, this young Irishman’s face was placid, and even somewhat melancholy in expression, but it lighted up when he spoke, and it was wonderfully quick in its changes from grave to gay, or gay to grave. It was like a rippling summer sea with cloud-shadows chasing each other all over it. Like most of his countrymen, Rory was brave even to a fault. Well, then, there you have his description in a few words, and if you will not let me call him poet, I really do not know what else to call him.

Ralph Leigh I must dismiss with a word. But, in a word, he was in my opinion everything that a young English gentleman should be; he was straightforward, bold and manly, and though very far from being as clever as Rory, he loved Rory for possessing the qualities he