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