The hour was late when the stranger
came to the moor’s bleak edge.
The short cut – was dangerous but
He was lured from the guiding hedge.
All for the gift he carried
and the message he must bear,
He paid heed – to his greater need,
Though his conscience might cry: “Beware!”
The wind grew icy and savage
gnawing his flesh like teeth.
Black as pitch – gaped a waiting ditch,
As it snatched a prey for the heath.
Out of the murderous darkness
in a weaving mesh of fog,
Lifting jowls – with curdling howls
Rose the massive form of a dog…
It flung itself at the stranger –
and its coat was thick and warm.
So it lay – ‘til streaks of day
Brought a rescuer with the dawn.
The stranger leaned on the pillows
and spoke from the drowsy bed –
“Was he yours – that dog on the moors?
But for him, I was surely dead.”
“Ah, no,” said the man. “My Pilot,
he died ten years ago.
Tired and old – and stiffened with cold,
From saving a man
In the snow.”
Clare Bevan
