f a girl. Ye're crazy," he said, going on, "stark,
Bedlam crazy!"

On the moment of his speaking Nancy came to the door with mutinous
eyes, a riot of color in her cheeks, and some filmy white stuff drawn
round her head and shoulders, and as she stood Danvers turned to us.

"Look at her!" he cried. "How else would ye have me be?"

We were out of doors one afternoon, perhaps a week later, sitting in
the shadow of the great tower. Nancy, in a frock of green, cut out at
the neck, and a bewildering big hat with pink flowers upon it, was
pouring tea for us, with Danvers Carmichael lying at full length on the
grass beside her, smoking and inventing excuses at intervals to touch
her hand.

The talk drifted round to Robert Burns, and when I stated the manner in
which Nancy and I had spent the first night we had had his book,
Danvers regarded us with no small degree of amazement.

"Did you," he inquired, after a pause, "sit up all night reading rhyme,
the two of you?"

"We did," said I; "and it's not the first night we have passed so,
Nancy Stair and I."

"But why," he went on, "couldn't you wait till the morning?"

"We're no made that way," I answered, with a laugh.

"Well," he returned, "the thing is as incomprehensible to me as if
you'd tattooed yourself; but," he added philosophically, clasping his
hands behind his head and staring up into the sky, "every man knows his
own fun. There's a friend of mine who knows this Burns," he added.

"What does he say of him?" I inquired with interest.

"Billy's hardly one to appreciate poetry," he answered, "but he fell in
with Burns somewhere at a masons' meeting. He said he was a handsome
pirate, who had sent the clergy of his native place into despair; that
he made love to every woman he saw, and that his name was the scandal
of the county; but that personally he considered the man a wonder and
liked him fine."

"Jock's going to have him here," Nancy said, with a pleased smile and
shining eyes.

"No, no," cried Danvers Carmichael, vehemently, sitting upright. "I
wouldn't do that, my lord."

"Why not?" Nancy inquired.

"It's a matter," he said, "that I could explain better to Lord Stair
than to you, Miss Nancy," and there was a consideration for her in his
tone which warmed my heart toward him.

"You mean," Nancy said, with a smile, "that he's not a good man and
will make love to me, mayhap, or that it might harm me in some way. You
don't appreciate the rearing I've