fter that came a yard of level
snow, and here she tugged and screamed in vain. I had so far been an
unobserved spectator; but my sympathies were with the beltie, and,
thinking it high time to interfere, I jumped into the water. The
water-hen gave one mighty final tug and toppled into the burn; while
the weasel viciously showed me his teeth, and then stole slowly up the
bank to the rose-bush, whence, "girning," he watched me lift his
exhausted victim from the water, and set off with her for the
schoolhouse. Except for her draggled tail, she already looks
wonderfully composed, and so long as the frost holds I shall have
little difficulty in keeping her with me. On Sunday I found a frozen
sparrow, whose heart had almost ceased to beat, in the disused pig-sty,
and put him for warmth into my breast-pocket. The ungrateful little
scrub bolted without a word of thanks about ten minutes afterwards to
the alarm of my cat, which had not known his whereabouts.

I am alone in the schoolhouse. On just such an evening as this last
year my desolation drove me to Waster Lunny, where I was storm-stayed
for the night. The recollection decides me to court my own warm
hearth, to challenge my right hand again to a game at the "dambrod"
against my left. I do not lock the schoolhouse 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 grey 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
schoolhouse.

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 schoolhouse. Until
twe