Arrived at the pond, they found tees marked, distances measured, and all in readiness for the play to begin. The usual salutations ensued. Broughton and Tweedsmuir shook hands all round with much apparent warmth; and the two sides, of four each, took their places in the following order: BROUGHTON. TWEEDSMUIR. Wil. Elliot, shoemaker, lead; Mr Henderson, schoolmaster, lead; Rev. Isaac Stevenson, 2d stone; Wattie Dalgleish, shepherd, 2d stone; Tam Johnston, blacksmith, 3d stone; Andrew Denholm, mason, 3d stone; Laird Murray, skip. Laird Scott, skip. The play was begun and continued with varying fortune: sometimes one side scored, sometimes the other. The match was to consist of thirty-one points; and at one o’clock when a halt was called for refreshments, the scoring was tolerably even. The frost was beginning to shew a slight tendency to give way, but this only nerved the players to further exertions in sweeping up the stones on the somewhat dulled ice. The scene in the forenoon had been a very lively one: but as the afternoon approached and the game was nearing an end, the liveliness was tempered with anxiety, which amounted almost to pain, as shot after shot was ‘put in’ by one side, only to be cleverly ‘taken’ by the other. ‘Soop! soop!’ was the incessant cry of the skips as from their point of vantage they descried a lagging stone; or ‘Haud up! I tell ye; haud up!’ when from that same point they beheld one of their players’ stones approaching with sufficient velocity to do all that was wanted. Anxiety was nearing a crisis. At half-past three the game stood: Broughton thirty, Tweedsmuir twenty-nine. The game was anybody’s. Coats had been cast as needless encumbrances; besoms were clutched with determined firmness: the skips slightly pale with the terrible excitement of the occasion, and the stake that was as it were hanging in the balance: want of nerve on their part to direct, or on the part of any one man to play, might decide the fate of the day. The last end had come to be played, and Broughton having won the previous end, was to lead. The shoemaker’s stone is played, and lies well over the hog-score in good line with the tee, and on the road to promotion. Tweedsmuir’s leading man, the schoolmaster, passes the souter’s stone and lies in ‘the house.’ ‘Well played dominie!’ cries Laird Scott to his lead. And so proceeds the ‘end’ till it comes to our friend the mason’s turn to play; the blacksmith having just played his first stone with but indifferent effect. ‘What do ye see o’ that stane Andrew?’ roars Laird Scott from the tee, pointing at the same time to the winning stone of the other side, which, however, was partially ‘guarded.’ ‘I see the half o’ t.’ ‘Then,’ says the laird, ‘make sure of it: tak it awa’, and if you rub off the guard there’s no harm done.’