Hogg gives a vivid picture of his own adventures in this storm.  He had gone from home the previous day, tramping over the Ettrick hills many a long mile to attend some friendly meeting of fellow-shepherds, leaving his sheep in charge of his master.  Arrived at his destination, and rendered uneasy by the unwonted appearance of the sky, without waiting for rest or for anything but a little food and drink, he turned and set out straightway on his homeward journey.  A tramp of thirty or forty miles over the hills is ordinarily no great matter for a young and active shepherd.  But now snow was falling; already it lay to some depth, making the footing toilsome and insecure.  Moreover, a curious yellow mist had spread over the hills, shrouding the hollows from sight; darkness must be on him hours before he could hope to reach home, and the night promised to be wild.  But what would daunt an ordinary pedestrian has no terrors for the Border shepherd, and Hogg safely reached his home before bedtime, to learn, greatly to his dismay, that his master, good easy man, had left the sheep that evening on an exposed part of the hill.  Not even the master’s “Never mind them the nicht, Jamie; they’re safe eneuch, and I’ll gie ye a hand in the morning,” could calm his anxiety.  However, on looking out before going to bed, he was comforted to find the wind coming from the south, and apparently a thaw beginning.  He might sleep in peace after all; things were going to turn out less bad than he had feared.

Tired as he was, however, try as he might, sleep would not come that night; an unaccountable feeling of restlessness and of vague apprehension had him in its grip.  Hour after hour he lay, listening irritably to the snoring of his fellow-shepherd, Borthwick, starting nervously at every scraping of rat or creak of timber.  At last, long after midnight, he rose and looked out.  The wind had fallen, but snow still fell; there was nothing abnormal in the night, and the weather might have been described as merely “seasonable.”  But away in the northern sky, low down, appeared a strange break in the mist, such as in all his experience he had never before seen.  And it came to his mind that the previous day, when on his homeward way he had “looked in” at his uncle’s house, the old man had predicted the coming of a violent storm, which would surely spring from that quarter in which should first be seen a phenomenon such as that on which Hogg was now looking.  The shepherd returned to bed, and had almost succeeded in falling into a doze, when again some impulse caused him to sit up and listen.  From far in the distant hills came quivering a strange low moaning that brought with it something of awe and suspense.  Nearer it drove, and nearer, rising at length to a fierce bellow; and then, with appalling roar, as of thunder, the gale hurled itself on to the building, shaking it to the foundations.  In the pitch blackness of the night Hogg groped his way to an opening in the byre over which he and Borthwick slept, and thrust out a hand and arm.  “So completely was the air overloaded with falling and driving snow that, but for the force of the wind, I felt as if I had thrust my arm into a wreath of snow,” he writes.