uty. If no prayer was volunteered for
Pitlums before his burial, there was a great deal of psalm-singing
after it.

By early morn on their Fast Day the Tilliedrummers were straggling into
Thrums, and the weavers, already at their looms, read the clattering of
feet and carts aright. To convince themselves, all they had to do was
to raise their eyes; but the first triumph would have been to
Tilliedrum if they had done that. The invaders--the men in Aberdeen
blue serge coats, velvet knee-breeches, and broad blue bonnets, and the
wincey gowns of the women set off with hooded cloaks of red or
tartan--tapped at the windows and shouted insultingly as they passed;
but, with pursed lips, Thrums bent fiercely over its wobs, and not an
Auld Licht showed outside his door. The day wore on to noon, and still
ribaldry was master of the wynds. But there was a change inside the
houses. The minister had pulled down his blinds; moody men had left
their looms for stools by the fire; there were rumours of a conflict in
Andra Gowrie's close, from which Kitty McQueen had emerged with her
short gown in rags; and Lang Tammas was going from door to door. The
austere precentor admonished fiery youth to beware of giving way to
passion; and it was a proud day for the Auld Lichts to find their
leading elder so conversant with apt Scripture texts. They bowed their
heads reverently while he thundered forth that those who lived by the
sword would perish by the sword; and when he had finished they took him
ben to inspect their bludgeons. I have a vivid recollection of going
the round of the Auld Licht and other houses to see the sticks and the
wrists in coils of wire.

A stranger in the Tenements in the afternoon would have noted more than
one draggled youth, in holiday attire, sitting on a doorstep with a wet
cloth to his nose; and, passing down the Commonty, he would have had to
step over prostrate lumps of humanity from which all shape had
departed. Gavin Ogilvy limped heavily after his encounter with Thrummy
Tosh--a struggle that was looked forward to eagerly as a bi-yearly
event; Chirsty Davie's development of muscle had not prevented her
going down before the terrible onslaught of Joe the miller, and Lang
Tammas's plasters told a tale. It was in the square that the two
parties, leading their maimed and blind, formed in force; Tilliedrum
thirsting for its opponents' blood, and Thrums humbly accepting the
responsibility of punching the