For one full year Susan was enabled to parry the addresses of the laird and the entreaties of her father. The former spent a great part of every day at James Hamilton’s, where he smoked incessantly, or, if he ceased at all, it was only to ask for liquor, or to utter a ribald jest. By this familiarity he only rendered himself the more intolerable to Susan. But it had a different effect upon the father. The laird became so thoroughly ingratiated with that individual, that there was no exertion of friendship which Hamilton would not make in his behalf. In fact, in order to secure to his daughter the eclat of being lady of Windigate, he was understood to have compromised all that he was worth in the world in securities for the behoof of his future son-in-law, whose fortune was suspected to be in no very flourishing condition. The unfortunate weaver exemplified a very common failing in the most sagacious characters, namely, a disposition, after a whole lifetime of prudence, to give way to some notably ridiculous error, which is rendered unalarming to them from its being totally different in character and tendency from any that they have been accustomed to avoid. At length came evil days. Owing to some turn of affairs in the progress of the war, cotton-weaving experienced a severe shock, by which many of the best Glasgow houses were materially damaged, and thousands of operatives throughout the country were thrown out of work. The very respectable establishment for which Hamilton had long acted as agent, lingered for a time in existence, and was able occasionally to send a small scantling of work, hardly enough to employ a tenth part of the population of the village. When the carrier was expected to come with these small supplies, numbers of poor men, attended by their wives and children, all of whom were alike unemployed, would go out for miles to meet the eagerly expected vehicle, to learn how much work was brought, and what prospect there was of more. On the small bag being opened by Hamilton, and perhaps only three webs being displayed, the grief of the poor people was beyond all description. The married men would then, by Hamilton’s directions, draw lots for those precious morsels of employment. While this process went forward, what eager breathless hope in the faces of both men and women, tempered, at the same time, by a religious sense of the misery which each man knew that his own success would inflict upon some equally deserving neighbour! What despair was depicted in each honest homely face, as it turned from the fatal lottery, upon the unhappy family group, which, more eagerly than himself, had watched the result of his throw! With what joy, mingled with sad sympathies for the rest, would the successful man bear home his load, though he knew that the price of his labour would hardly be sufficient to supply the food necessary to support him, even though he were to work sixteen hours a-day! At length, towards winter,