For a moment it seemed as if the General would fall. His thick neck grew scarlet, his eyes turned opaque and filled with tears, and he trembled and almost tottered on his legs. Then the fit passed as suddenly as it had come. He threw a sweeping glance up and down the figure of his son--taking in the elegant line of the trousers, the costly fur, the delicate, spotless gloves, the white jewelled neckwear, the shining hat, the hardened and angry face beneath it--and then broke boisterously forth into a loud guffaw of contemptuous laughter. When he had laughed his fill, he turned upon his heel without a word and walked away, carrying himself with proud erectness, and thumping his umbrella on the sidewalk with each step as he went. CHAPTER XXVII.--THE LOCKOUT. When Thessaly awoke one morning some fortnight later, and rubbed its eyes, and, looking again, discovered in truth that everything outside was white, the recognition of the familiar visitor was followed by a sigh. The children still had a noisy friendliness of greeting for the snow, and got out their sleds and bored anticipatory holes in their boot-heels with a thrill of old-time enthusiasm; but even their delight became subdued in its manifestations before noon had arrived--their elders seemed to take the advent of winter so seriously. Villagers, when they spoke to one another that morning, noted that the voice of the community had suddenly grown graver in tone and lower in pitch. The threat of the approaching season weighed with novel heaviness on the general mind. For the first time since the place had begun its manufacturing career, Thessaly was idle. The Minster furnaces had been closed for more than two weeks; the mills of the Thessaly Manufacturing Company, for nearly that length of time. Half the bread-winners in the town were out of work and saw no prospect of present employment. Usage is most of all advantageous _in_ adversity; These artisans of Thessaly lacked experience in enforced idleness and the trick of making bricks without straw. Employment, regular and well requited, had become so much a matter of course that its sudden cessation now bewildered and angered them. Each day brought to their minds its fresh train of calamitous consequences. Children needed shoes; the flour-barrel was nearly empty; to lay in a pig for the winter might now be impossible. The question of rent quarter loomed black and menacing like a thunder-cloud on the horizon; and there were those with mortgages on their little homes, who already saw this cloud streaked with the lightning of impending tempest. Anxious housewives began to retrench at the grocer’s and butcher’s; but the saloons and tobacco shops had almost doubled their average of receipts.