True to the traditions of their craft, of course, most of the weavers were the reddest of Radicals, and the progress of the Chartist movement excited the keenest interest among them. The work at the looms was to a great extent mechanical, and while they pushed the treadles and pulled the shuttles to and fro, the weavers had time to think; and shrewd thinkers and able debaters many of them became, ready at the hustings with questions on the Corn Laws, the freeing of the slaves, and the Irish grievances, which were apt to put a political candidate to some trouble. He had not their advantage of the daily “argufying” and the Saturday night debates at the village inn. There was a tradition that in the room where this club met, the poet Burns had once spent an evening, and the fact lent an additional zest to his song, which they never tired of quoting,--“A man’s a man for a’ that.” A king can mak’ a belted knight, A marquis, duke, and a’ that; But an honest man’s aboon his might, Guid faith he maunna fa’ that. The industry of the village has died hard. Amid decaying trade the weavers kept to their looms, and many a pinch was suffered before one after another laid down his shuttle. Their feelings are not difficult to understand. As boys they had played about the village well. As young men they had wandered with their sweethearts--that delicious time--down the woodland roads around. Memories had grown about them and their old homes during the long years of work. In the kirkyard not far off lay the ashes of mother or wife or child. But the merchants had ceased to come to the village, and it was a weary walk for the poor weavers to carry their webs all the way to Glasgow, to hawk them from warehouse to warehouse, and sometimes to have the choice at last of accepting a ruinous price for them, or of taking them home again.