hearth, to challenge my right hand again to a game at the "dambrod"
against my left. I do not lock the school-house door at nights; for
even a highwayman (there is no such luck) would be received with open
arms, and I doubt if there be a barred door in all the glen. But it
is cosier to put on the shutters. The road to Thrums has lost itself
miles down the valley. I wonder what they are doing out in the world.
Though I am the Free Church precentor in Thrums (ten pounds a year,
and the little town is five miles away), they have not seen me for
three weeks. A packman whom I thawed yesterday at my kitchen fire
tells me that last Sabbath only the Auld Lichts held service. Other
people realized that they were snowed up. Far up the glen, after it
twists out of view, a manse and half a dozen thatched cottages that
are there may still show a candle-light, and the crumbling gravestones
keep cold vigil round the gray old kirk. Heavy shadows fade into the
sky to the north. A flake trembles against the window; but it is too
cold for much snow to-night. The shutter bars the outer world from
the school-house.




CHAPTER II.


THRUMS.

Thrums is the name I give here to the handful of houses jumbled
together in a cup, which is the town nearest the school-house. Until
twenty years ago its every other room, earthen-floored and showing
the rafters overhead, had a hand-loom, and hundreds of weavers lived