There was a good deal of hanging in those days; and yet the authorities had an ugly way of reprieving condemned men on whom the sightseers had been counting.
An air of gloom would gather on my old friend's countenance when he told how he and his contemporaries in Thrums trudged every Saturday for six weeks to the county town, many miles distant, to witness the execution of some criminal in whom they had a local interest, and who, after disappointing them again and again, was said to have been bought off by a friend.

His crime had been stolen entrance into a house in Thrums by the chimney, with intent to rob; and, though this old-fashioned family did not see it, not the least noticeable incident in the scrimmage that followed was the prudence of the canny housewife.
When she saw the legs coming down the lum, she rushed to the kail-pot which was on the fire and put on the lid.

She confessed that this was not done to prevent the visitor's scalding himself, but to save the broth.
The old man was repeated in his three sons.

They told his stories precisely as he did himself, taking as long in the telling, and making the points in exactly the same way.

By and by they will come to think that they themselves were of those past times.