with their smoking horns often made of the stem or "runt" of a winter
cabbage, wherewith that night they would inevitably smoke out of "house and
hauld" every devil's lamb of every gossip that did not open her hand and
"deal her bread" to the guysers. Both parties, gossips and urchins,
understood each other--like two belligerent powers asserting mutual rights,
and contemplating each other with that look of half-concealed contention
and defiance, which only tended to make the attack more inevitable.

The evening set in, and the witching hour--the keystone of night's black
arch, twelve o'clock--was approaching. To go to bed on such an occasion,
would have been held no better than for a jolly toper to shirk his bicker,
a lover to eschew the trysting thorn, or a warrior to fly the scene of his
country's glory; neither would it have been safe, for no good guyser of the
old school would take the excuse of being in bed in lieu of the buttered
pease-bannock--the true hogmanay cake, to which he was entitled, by "the
auld use and wont" of Scotland; and far better breathe the smoke of the
"smeikin horn" on foot, and with the means of self-defence at command, than
lie choked in bed, and "deaved" by the stock and horn, the squalling
bagpipe, and the eternal--

"Hery, Hary, Hubblischow,
See ye not quha is come now!"

ringing in one's ears during the whole night. The young were out; the old
were in; but all were equally up and doing the honours of the occasion. At
auld Wat Wabster's door, one minstrel company were singing--"Great is my
sorrow;" and Marion, his daughter, with

"Her glitterand hair, that was sae gowden,"

dealt out, with leal hand, the guyser's bannock. At the very next door, Meg
Johnston was in the act of being "smecked oot" by a covey of twelve devils,
who had inserted into every cranny a horn, and were blowing, with puffed
cheeks, a choking death in every blast. One kept watch, to give the
concerted signal when Meg should appear with her stick. On which occasion
they were off in an instant; but only to return when Meg had let out the
smoke, and satisfied herself that she would be no more tormented that
night, to blow her up and out again, with greater vigour and a denser smoke
than before. Farther on, Gib Dempster's dame, Kate, is at her door, with
the bottle in her hand, to give another menyie of maskers their "hogmanay,"
in the form of a dram; and Gib is at her back, eyeing her with a squint, to
cou