It was Tommy’s first Muckley, and the report that he had thirteen pence brought him many advisers about its best investment.  Even Corp Shiach (five pence) suspended hostilities for this purpose.  “Mind this,” he said solemnly, “there’s none o’ the candies as sucks so long as Californy’s Teuch and Tasty.  Other kinds may be sweeter, but Teuch and Tasty lasts the longest, and what a grip it has!  It pulls out your teeth!” Corp seemed to think that this was a recommendation.

“I’m nane sure o’ Teuch and Tasty,” Birkie said.  “If you dinna keep a watch on it, it slips ower when you’re swallowing your spittle.”

“Then you should tie a string to it,” suggested Tommy, who was thought more of from that hour.

Beware of Pickpockets! Had it not been for placards with this glorious announcement (it is the state’s first printed acknowledgment that boys and girls form part of the body politic) you might have thought that the night before the Muckley was absurdly like other nights.  Not a show had arrived, not a strange dog, no romantic figures were wandering the streets in search of lodgings, no stands had sprung up in the square.  You could pass hours in pretending to fear that when the morning came there would be no fairyland.  And all the time you knew.

About ten o’clock Ballingall’s cat was observed washing its face, a deliberate attempt to bring on rain.  It was immediately put to death.

Tommy and Elspeth had agreed to lie awake all night; if Tommy nipped Elspeth, Elspeth would nip Tommy.  Other children had made the same arrangement, though the experienced ones were aware that it would fail.  If it was true that all the witches were dead, then the streets of stands and shows and gaming-tables and shooting-galleries were erected by human hands, and it followed that were you to listen through the night you must hear the hammers.  But always in the watches the god of the Muckley came unseen and glued your eyes, as if with Teuch and Tasty, and while you slept—­Up you woke with a start.  What was it you were to mind as soon as you woke?  Listen!  That’s a drum beating!  It’s the Muckley!  They are all here!  It has begun!  Oh, michty, michty, michty, whaur’s my breeks?

When Tommy, with Elspeth and Grizel, set off excitedly for the town, the country folk were already swarming in.  The Monypenny road was thick with them, braw loons in blue bonnets with red bobs to them, tartan waistcoats, scarves of every color, woollen shirts as gay, and the strutting wearers in two minds—­whether to take off the scarf to display the shirt, or hide the shirt and trust to the scarf.  Came lassies, too, in wincey bodices they were like to burst through, and they were listening apprehensively as they ploughed onward for a tearing at the seams.  There were red-headed lasses, yellow-chy-headed and black-headed, blue-shawled and red-shawled lasses; boots on every one of them, stockings almost as common, the skirt kilted up for the present, but down it should go when they were in the thick of things, and then it must take care of itself.  All were solemn and sheepish as yet, but wait a bit.