It was in November; and the cold glimmering sun sank behind the Pentlands. The trees had been shorn of their frail leaves, and the misty night was closing fast in upon the dull and short day; but the candles glittered at the shop windows, and leery-light-the-lamps was brushing about with his ladder in his oxter, and bleezing flamboy sparking out behind him. I felt a kind of qualm of faintness and down-sinking about my heart and stomach, to the dispelling of which I took a thimbleful of spirits, and, tying my red comforter about my neck, I marched briskly to the session-house. A neighbour (Andrew Goldie, the pensioner) lent me his piece, and loaded it to me. He took tent that it was only half-cock, and I wrapped a napkin round the dog-head, for it was raining. Not being well acquaint with guns, I kept the muzzle aye away from me; as it is every man's duty not to throw his precious life into jeopardy. A furm was set before the session-house fire, which bleezed brightly, nor had I any thought that such an unearthly place could have been made to look half so comfortable either by coal or candle; so my spirits rose up as if a weight had been taken off them, and I wondered, in my bravery, that a man like me could be afraid of anything. Nobody was there but a touzy, ragged, halflins callant of thirteen, (for I speired his age,) with a desperate dirty face, and long carroty hair, tearing a speldrin with his teeth, which looked long and sharp enough, and throwing the skin and lugs into the fire. We sat for mostly an hour together, cracking the best way we could in such a place; nor was anybody more likely to cast up. The night was now pitmirk; the wind soughed amid the head-stones and railings of the gentry, (for we must all die,) and the black corbies in the steeple-holes cackled and crawed in a fearsome manner. All at once we heard a lonesome sound; and my heart began to play pit-pat--my skin grew all rough, like a pouked chicken--and I felt as if I did not know what was the matter with me. It was only a false alarm, however, being the warning of the clock; and, in a minute or two thereafter, the bell struck ten. Oh, but it was a lonesome and dreary sound! Every chap went through my breast like the dunt of a fore-hammer. Then up and spak the red-headed laddie:--"It's no fair; anither should hae come by this time. I wad rin awa hame, only I am frighted to gang out my lane.--Do ye think the doup of that candle wad carry i' my cap?"