was put to steep, when it
was taken out, &c.--in short, was determined to be entirely ignorant
of the affair. By and by, Mr J.'s son came in, and on being questioned
as to the steeping, taking out of the grain, &c., Mr J., junior,
referred me to this said servant, this ploughman, who, he said, must
remember it best, as having been the principal actor in the business.
The lad _then_, having gotten his cue, circumstantially recollected
all about it.

"All this time, though I was telling the son and servant the nature of
the premunire they had incurred, though they pleaded for mercy keenly,
the affair of the notice having been sent never once occurred to them,
not even the son, who is said to have been the bearer. This was a
stroke reserved for, and worthy of the gentleman himself. As to Mrs
Kelloch's oath, it proves nothing. She did indeed depone to a line
being left for me at her house, which said line miscarried. It was a
sealed letter; she could not tell whether it was a malt-notice or not;
she could not even condescend on the month, nor so much as the season
of the year. The truth is, T. J. and his family being Seceders, and
consequently coming every Sunday to Thornhill Meeting-house, they were
a good conveyance for the several maltsters and traders in their
neighbourhood to transmit to post their notices, permits, &c.

"But why all this tergiversation? It was put to the petitioner in open
court, after a full investigation of the cause: 'Was he willing to
swear that he meant no fraud in the matter?' And the justices told him
that if he swore he would be assoilzied [absolved], otherwise he
should be fined; still the petitioner, after ten minutes'
consideration, found his conscience unequal to the task, and declined
the oath.

"Now, indeed, he says he is willing to swear: he has been exercising
his conscience in private, and will perhaps stretch a point. But the
fact to which he is to swear was equally and in all parts known to him
on that day when he refused to swear as to-day: nothing can give him
further light as to the intention of his mind, respecting his meaning
or not meaning a fraud in the affair. _No time can cast further light
on the present resolves of the mind; but time will reconcile, and has
reconciled many a man to that iniquity which he at first abhorred._"'

No one can fail to see, even in this piece of business, something of
the extraordinary mental energy of Burns.

The daily life of Burns, in h