peak to you, Lord Stair," he said, "but there is such
sincerity of admiration at the root of it that ye'll can just be
forgiving me if I trespass on your sense of the proprieties. 'Tis of
your daughter, Mistress Stair. I was carried off my feet by her singing
at the charity ball, and the verses she writes are as unstudied as the
song of a lark. But she will never write a poem that is so great as
herself. All her accomplishments seem to me but a set of warbles or
trills to the true song of her great womanhood. 'Where she is,'" he
quoted prettily, "'man will be more than his wont, because of her
belief.'"

And at these words my resolutions were clean forgotten in my pride in
his praises of her.

"She wants to know you, Mr. Burns. Your book is by her day and night,"
I cried, at which he looked flattered, but said he was for Ayr that
afternoon, and the pleasure of an acquaintance with her must be put by
until some later date.

I told him at this that a friend had invited us down to his part of the
country for the fair, where we might meet again, on which he took a
slip from his pocket, putting his Edinburgh address on one side of it,
like this:

"It is in the house of Mrs. Carfrae, Baxter Close, Town market:
first scale-stair on the left hand going down; first door on the
stair,"

and on the other:

"To Mistress Nancy, Mistress Stair,
At Mauchline race or Mauchline fair,
I shall be glad to meet you there.
We'll give one night's discharge to care,
If we forgither,
And have 'a-swap-of-rhyming-ware,'
With ane anither."

And it was this "swap o' rhyming ware" which brought about the tragedy
toward which I draw.

CHAPTER XIII

THE DUKE VISITS STAIR FOR THE FIRST TIME

On my return to Stair I found Nancy on the south steps with a letter in
her hand. In her white frock, with her hair bobbing in a bunch of curls
on the top of her head, she looked scarce older than the day I had
found her there "making verses" years agone.

"You went away," she said, with reproach in her tone.

"Guess whom I fell in with," I answered.

She hesitated a minute.

"Robin," said I.

"Robin who?" she inquired.

"Who but Robin Burns?"

"Oh, did ye?" she cried, her face aglow on the instant; "did ye, Jock?
Why didn't ye bring him back with ye?"

"He's for Ayr this afternoon," I answered; "but he sent a word to ye,"
and I gave her the card in Burns' own hand.

"That's funny,"