lay with, the U.P.'s by two women and a boy. Of course the Auld
Lichts mustered in as great force as ever. The other kirks never
dreamed of competing with them. What was regarded as a judgment on
the Free Kirk for its boastfulness of spirit on the preceding Sunday
happened during the forenoon. While the service was taking place a
huge clod of snow slipped from the roof and fell right against the
church door. It was some time before the prisoners could make up
their minds to leave by the windows. What the Auld Lichts would have
done in a similar predicament I cannot even conjecture.

That was the first warning of the thaw. It froze again; there was
more snow; the thaw began in earnest; and then the streets were a
sight to see. There was no traffic to turn the snow to slush, and,
where it had not been piled up in walls a few feet from the houses,
it remained in the narrow ways till it became a lake. It tried to
escape through doorways, when it sank, slowly into the floors.
Gentle breezes created a ripple on its surface, and strong winds
lifted it into the air and flung it against the houses. It
undermined the heaps of clotted snow till they tottered like
icebergs and fell to pieces. Men made their way through, it on
stilts. Had a frost followed, the result would have been appalling;
but there was no more frost that winter. A fortnight passed before
the place looked itself again, and even then congealed snow stood
doggedly in the streets, while the country roads were like newly
ploughed fields after rain. The heat from large fires soon
penetrated through roofs of slate and thatch; and it was quite a
common thing for a man to be flattened to the ground by a slithering
of snow from above just as he opened his door. But it had seldom
more than ten feet to fall. Most interesting of all was the novel
sensation experienced as Thrums began to assume its familiar aspect,