e, and no sooner were they lit than a wind
that had been biding its time rushed in like the merriman, making the
lamps swing on their strings, so that the flaring lights embraced, and
from a distance Thrums seemed to be on fire.

Even Grizel was willing to hold Tommy's hand now, and the three could
only move this way and that as the roaring crowd carried them. They were
not looking at the Muckley, they were part of it, and at last Thrums was
all Tommy's fancy had painted it. This intoxicated him, so that he had
to scream at intervals, "We're here, Elspeth, I tell you, we're here!"
and he became pugnacious and asked youths twice his size whether they
denied that he was here, and if so, would they come on. In this frenzy
he was seen by Miss Ailie, who had stolen out in a veil to look for
Gavinia, but just as she was about to reprove him, dreadful men asked
her was she in search of a lad, whereupon she fled home and barred the
door, and later in the evening warned Gavinia, through the key-hole,
taking her for a roystering blade, that there were policemen in the
house, to which the astounding reply of Gavinia, then aged twelve, was,
"No sic luck."

With the darkness, too, crept into the Muckley certain devils in the
color of the night who spoke thickly and rolled braw lads in the mire,
and egged on friends to fight and cast lewd thoughts into the minds of
the women. At first the men had been bashful swains. To the women's "Gie
me my faring, Jock," they had replied, "Wait, Jean, till I'm fee'd," but
by night most had got their arles, with a dram above it, and he who
could only guffaw at Jean a few hours ago had her round the waist now,
and still an arm free for rough play with other kimmers. The Jeans were
as boisterous as the Jocks, giving them leer for leer, running from them
with a giggle, waiting to be caught and rudely kissed. Grand, patient,
long-suffering fellows these men were, up at five, summer and winter,
foddering their horses, maybe hours before there would be food for
themselves, miserably paid, housed like cattle, and when the rheumatism
seized them, liable to be flung aside like a broken graip. As hard was
the life of the women: coarse food, chaff beds, damp clothes, their
portion; their sweethearts in the service of masters who were reluctant
to fee a married man. Is it to be wondered that these lads who could be
faithful unto death drank soddenly on their one free day, that these
girls, starved of opportun