To clear the snow from the narrow wynds and pends, however, was a task not to be attempted; and the Auld Lichts, at least, rested content when enough light got into their workshops to let them see where their looms stood.

Wading through beds of snow they did not much mind; but they wondered what would happen to their houses when the thaw came.
The thaw was slow in coming.

Snow during the night and several degrees of frost by day were what Thrums began to accept as a revised order of nature.

Vainly the Thrums doctor, whose practice extends into the glens, made repeated attempts to reach his distant patients, twice driving so far into the dreary waste that he could neither go on nor turn back.

A ploughman who contrived to gallop ten miles for him did not get home for a week.