Weeks of partial famine passed on, and now the distresses of the villagers were suddenly doubled by the premature commencement of a very severe winter. With the exception of their small patches of potatoes and garden vegetables, there seemed hardly any resource for them during the whole winter. The minister, whose own income was exhausted in providing for their wants, thought it necessary, under these distressing circumstances, to call them all together, and join them in one solemn exercise of humiliation appropriate to the occasion. Just as this was concluded, a boy belonging to an inn about ten miles distant upon the Glasgow road, arrived, after a toilsome journey through the snow, and gave the joyful news that a cart filled with webs was storm-stayed at his master’s house, on its way to the village, the trade having suddenly experienced a slight revival. Transported with this intelligence, though no one could guess by whom the work could have been sent, they one and all resolved to proceed to Redcraigs, where the cart was lying, and aid in clearing a way for it through the snow. Every spade and semblance of a spade was then put in requisition, and the half of the bannocks in the village were brought forward, without the least regard to individual property, to provision the troop of pioneers. Thirty men set out early next morning on this expedition, graced with the blessings and prayers of all who saw them depart. The snow, it was found, had only fallen to the depth of three feet, but it was drifted in many hollow parts of the road to six times that depth, so as to present an insurmountable obstacle to the progress of a cart. At all those places the weavers exerted themselves as they advanced to clear away the gelid heaps. The toil was most severe; but what these poor starved men wanted in strength, they made up by zeal—that zeal, above all others, which is inspired by the wish of answering the clamour of a hungry family circle with the necessary bite. The thought that work was before them, that money would again be procured, and, for that money, food to supply “the bairns at hame,” nerved every arm with superhuman energy; and as the country people every where lent a willing, though less enthusiastic assistance, the party had before mid-day cleared their way to Redcraigs. What was their surprise on being met there by their friend Adam Cuthbertson, of whom they had not heard ever since he left Daldaff, and who now informed them, with ineffable pleasure beaming in his eyes, that he had been the happy means of procuring them this supply of work. He had entered, he said, into the service of a manufacturer at Glasgow, and having divulged to him a plan of improving the loom, had been advanced to a very onerous place of trust in the factory. His employer having weathered on till the present revival of trade, he had used the little influence he had, to get his old master, of whose misfortunes he had