After the farmer had gone to bed, some half-dozen ploughmen and a few other poachers from Thrums would set out for the meeting-place.
The smithy on these occasions must have been a weird sight; though one did not mark that at the time.

The poacher crept from the darkness.
into the glaring smithy light; for in country parts the anvil might sometimes be heard clanging at all hours of the night.

As a rule, every face was blackened; and it was this, I suppose, rather than the fact that dark nights were chosen that gave the gangs the name of black-fishers.

Other disguises were resorted to; one of the commonest being to change clothes or to turn your corduroys outside in.

The country-folk of those days were more superstitious than they are now, and it did not take much to turn the black-fishers back.