The eve of Christmas was dark and gloomy. The moon was enveloped in clouds, and not a star was visible; but the frozen snow that covered the whole ground gave, by its whiteness, a reflected light. The hollow wind blustered in the bare copsewood and rumbled in the chimnies, and a very social but hum-drum party of old friends formed a circle round the fire-place in the chamber-of-dais. Old Lady Grisel occupied her great-cushioned chair, with her spinning-wheel on one hand, and her cup of milk posset on a tripod table at the other. The neighbouring Laird of Drumdryan, a plain, hard-featured man, in an unlaced coat and hideous wig; Sir Thomas Dalyell, in a gala suit of laced buff, rather cross and irritable with a lumbago contracted in Muscovy; and the dowager Lady Drumsturdy, all stomacher, starch, and black satin, with Mistress Priscilla, her daughter and exact counterpart, occupied the foreground; while honest Syme of the Greenhill, in his plain hodden-gray coat, a flaming red vest, with ribbed galligaskins rolled over his knees, and his fat, comely dame, with her serge gown, laced coif, and bunch of household keys, sat respectfully a little behind. While the two lairds were accommodated with silver tankards, which Mr. Drouthy replenished again and again with the burnt sack, then so much in vogue, the bluff ground baillie, in virtue of his humbler station, drank nut-brown ale from plain pewter. Every thing in the apartment was trimmed with green holly branches, and a mistletoe bough hung from the great dormont-tree of the ceiling, under which the long-bearded old cavalier saluted Lady Grisel's faded cheek with much good humour and courtesy. "Yes, Simeon, it was the case," continued the latter, who was engaged in some prosy reminiscence of King Charles the First's days. "A fiery dragon _was_ seen in the west, and it flew owre the Muirfute hills, towards the castle of Dunbar; and, that day month, a mournful field was fought and lost there." "I weel mind the time, your ladyship," replied Simeon, scratching his galligaskins where he had received a thrust from a Puritan's pike; "but the fleeing dragon, wi' its fiery tail, was thought to portend----" "Just such things, Simeon, as the bright lights in the north hae portended this month past. And ye ken, Sir Thomas, that the miraculous shower of Highland bannets whilk preceded the irruption of the ill-faured Redshanks into the west, in the December of '84, was another wonderful and terrible omen." "True, Lady Grisel," replied Dalyell, taking a sip from his tankard; "but ane partaking owre mickle o' the leaven o' the auld Covenant (d--n it!) for an auld cavalier like myself to believe; unless auld Mahoud was the merchant that made sae free wi' his gear. He has owre lang been poking his neb in our Scottish affairs."