d gossip another gossip, and compared notes, and exchanged
shrewd guesses, eloquent winks, and pregnant vibrations of wondering
noddles, that the mysterious stranger was invested with all the attributes
to which he was, by virtue of his super-human powers, so clearly entitled.
He was immediately elevated to the place which, in those days, was reserved
in every cranium for the throne of the genius of superstition; yea he of
the red cravat and red liquor was the never-ending subject of conversation,
investigation, speculation, and consternation of the good folks of the town
of Christ's Kirk. While the terror he had inspired was still fresh on the
minds of the people, he returned at the exact hour of twelve on the
subsequent Halloween. He brought again his bottle of red liquor, was
dressed in the same style, wore the same red cravat, and was invested with
the same sublimating powers of extravagant merriment. He went his old
rounds; cracked nuts with the kittys; ducked for the apple, which never
escaped his mouth; threw the weight in the barn; spaed fortunes with the
Mauses; drank with the tosspots--

"If you can be blest the day,
Ne'er defer it till the morn--
Peril still attends delay;
As the fools will find, when they
Have their happy hour forborne;"

and, by means of his wild humour and exhilarating drink, set all the scene
of his former exploits in an uproar of mixed terror, jollity, superstition,
and amazement. Every one, not possessed of fear, scrutinized him; those
(and they were many) who were stricken with terror, avoided him as if he
had in reality been the gentleman in black, as indeed many at that time
alleged he was; some who had heard of him, watched to catch a passing
glimpse of him; but, wonderful as it may seem, the jolly stranger again
disappeared, and no one, even those who had got royally drunk with him,
could say aught more of him than was said on the prior occasion; viz., that
he was the very prince of good fellows, if he should be the "very
big-horned Deil himsel." On his second disappearance, the point was no
longer a moot one, "Who the devil he could be?" for the very question, as
put, decided the question before it was answered. The point was just as
lucid as ever was the spring of St Anthony, and no one could be gravelled,
where there was not a grain of sand to interrupt the vision. There was not
in the limits of the guid toun a dame or damsel, greybeard, or no-beard,
th