the sign." And the first thing I did
was to bring him into touch with the circuit judge, who had the
room adjoining mine at the hotel. He was a Burns lover, too; and
besides as I had brought whiskey and as the town was prohibition,
there was really nowhere else for the judge to spend his evenings.
Soon we were capping back and forth, the judge and I, with Burns.

I don't remember now--nobody ever remembers, after a cold, snowy
night outside, between Burns quotations, hot whiskies, and
reminiscences, exactly how anything happens--but about 10 o'clock,
maybe, Allison was somewhere between "Jockey's Ta'en the Parting
Kiss," "Bonnie Doon," "Afton Water" and "Wert Thou in the Cauld
Blast," and the judge and I were looking deep into the coals of the
grate and crying softly and unconsciously together. You see it
wasn't only the songs. Every damned one of us was Scotch-Irish and
we just sat there and were transported back to the beginning of
ourselves in the bare old primitive homes of us in farm and
village, saw the log and coal fires of infancy blazing up again,
and heard the voices of our mothers crooning and caressing those
marvelous lines, and behind them _their_ mothers crooning and
wailing the same back in the unbroken line to Ayrshire and the
Pentland Hills. And all life was just a look into yesterday and the
troubles and the struggles of manhood fell right off as garments
and left us boys again. That's what's in Burns, the singing poet.
That is, when anybody knows how to sing him--not concert singers
with artfulness, but just a singer with the right quaver and the
whine of catgut in the voice and the tailing of Scotch pipes for
the swells. It was perhaps two o'clock of the morning when we stood
up, said "Little Willie's Prayer" softly together, arms on
shoulders, and the judge remarked:

"Allison, if you wrote like you sing Burns, maybe you wouldn't be
here--but it's well worth the trouble!"

I knew then there was no more politics to practice--just law enough
to be found to let the court stand firm when the time came.

The next night it was in the judge's room. Half a dozen old
followers of the circuit were there on the judge's tip. "You bring
your whiskey," he said to me, privately, "or there'll be none." And
I brought it. And between Burns and the bottle and the long low