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The Copper Box

the Scottish border, going round by Kirknewton, Coldburn, and the Cheviot, and getting back to my starting-point by Hedgehope Hill and Kelpie Strand. That would have been a big walk on a long and fair summer day; in the uncertainty of a northern April it was a rash venture, which landed me in a highly unpleasant situation before the close of the afternoon. The morning was bright and promising, and for many enjoyable hours all went well. But about three o'clock came a disappearance of the sun and a suspicious darkening of the sky and lowering of temperature; before long snow began to fall, and in a fashion with which I, a Southerner, was not at all familiar. It was thick, it was blinding, it was persistent; it speedily obscured tracks, and heaped itself up in hollows; I began to have visions of being lost in it. And between five and six o'clock I found myself in this position—as far as I could make out from my pocket-map, I was at some point of the Angle between the Cheviot, Cairn Hill, and Hedgehope Hill and at the western extremity of Harthope Burn, but for all practical purposes I might as well have been in the heart of the Andes. I could just