of the tall of Balaam's ass, the helm of Noah's ark, and the tartan
plaid in which Flora McDonald wrapped Prince Charlie. More select
entertainment, such as Shuffle Kitty's wax-work, whose motto was, "A
rag to pay, and in you go," were given in a hall whose approach was
by an outside stair. On the Muckle Friday, the fair for which
children storing their pocket-money would accumulate sevenpence
halfpenny in less than six months, the square was crammed with
gingerbread stalls, bag-pipers, fiddlers, and monstrosities who were
gifted with second-sight. There was a bearded man, who had neither
legs nor arms, and was drawn through the streets in a small cart by
four dogs. By looking at you he could see all the clock-work inside,
as could a boy who was led about by his mother at the end of a
string. Every Friday there was the market, when a dozen ramshackle
carts containing vegetables and cheap crockery filled the centre of
the square, resting in line on their shafts. A score of farmers' wives
or daughters in old-world garments squatted against the town-house
within walls of butter on cabbage-leaves, eggs and chickens. Toward
evening the voice of the buckie-man shook the square, and rival
fish-cadgers, terrible characters who ran races on horseback, screamed
libels at each other over a fruiterer's barrow. Then it was time for
douce Auld Lichts to go home, draw their stools near the fire, spread
their red handkerchiefs over their legs to prevent their trousers
getting singed, and read their "Pilgrim's Progress."

In my school-house, however, I seem to see the square most readily
in the Scotch mist which so often filled it, loosening the stones
and choking the drains. There was then no rattle of rain against my
window-sill, nor dancing of diamond drops on the roofs, but blobs of
water grew on the panes of glass to reel heavily down them. Then the
sodden square would have shed abundant tears if you could have taken