"Preserve's a', that's dreadfu!" he at length cried out, making a most magnificent jump at the same time. "Flesh and bluid canna endure that--it wad gar a horse swither. Ye'll just hae to thole awee till I get my claes on, lad."
James bounded into the house, and commenced immediately to get his shivering limbs conducted into the proper openings of a pair of canvas trousers. But this was no easy task. He had got one foot in, and the other within a few inches of the entrance, when his great toe unluckily got entangled in one of the pockets of the garment, and, as he was striving to preserve his equilibrium, by hopping through the house backwards upon one leg, the stranger, who had forced himself through the aperture which he had made in the doorway, entered like a moving mass of snow. James at length succeeded, by the support of the bed, which happily resisted his retrograde movement, in getting on his clothes; and then all his attention was directed to the comfort of his guest.
"Dear me, man," said he, taking hold of the stranger's arm with the one hand, and a broom with the other, "ye'll need hauf-an-hoor's soopin afore we get a sicht o' ye. I'm sure ye're unco far frae comfortable below that wread o' snaw."
As the stranger was standing before the fire, while James was endeavouring to clear away the snow from his neck and shoulder, the sudden change of temperature which he had experienced, expanding the fluids faster than the vessels which contained them, produced in his extremities that agonising sensation which is more forcibly expressed by the Scottish word _dinnling_, than by any other word with which we are acquainted. Sickness and pain overpowered his exhausted nerves. His eyes turned wildly up to the roof of the cottage. He gave one suffocating gasp for breath, and sank senseless upon the floor. James seized him in his arms, and called out to his wife--
"O Nanny, Nanny, woman! get up and help's here! The puir callant's fa'en into a drow, and I'm feared he's gaun to dee upon our hands athegither. Get up, woman, and let's try if onything can be dune to bring him aboot again."
Nanny sprang up at the call of her husband; and, seizing the stranger by the hand, cried out--