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‘The spademen stopped work not a moment; for though a sheep can breathe through many feet of snow, a man suffers terribly when buried over a foot. Soon a boot was reached, and in a few seconds the drift had been thrown aside sufficiently for Howson to be lifted out. He was pretty much dazed, but no worse for the mishap, and in ten minutes he again took his share of the digging. Immediately beneath where his body had been lying an old ewe was found, and seven more within some two yards. Altogether, thirteen sheep were brought out. Only five were missing from both flocks now—three from mine and two from Joe’s; and as we couldn’t find the exact places—the snow was so deep that the dogs couldn’t scent them—where they were lying, we were forced to let them bide [remain]. They might have the luck, we thought, to live through till the thaw came, and the melting snow mightn’t, perhaps, drown them all. Besides’—and here the native shrewdness of the shepherd shone through the eloquence of the raconteur—‘it would have cost a deal to dig the ghyll dear of snow—far more than five ewes at forty shillings apiece are worth.‘