gularly sweet and sunny.

Such was Robert Burns at Mossgiel, and a very likable person he was. But
all the while there was another Robert Burns at Mossgiel, and he was not
quite so likable. He had a strange fascination for women, and a strange
disregard of the consequences of this fascination. This curious
combination of contradictory traits was an unfortunate one, as a young
woman of Mauchline was destined to learn. She was the daughter of a
mason, and her name was Jean Armour. He met her on a race day at a house
of entertainment which must have been popular, since it contained a
dancing-hall, admission to which was free, any man being privileged to
invite to it any woman whom he fancied and for whose diversion he was
willing to disburse a penny to the fiddler. He was accompanied on this
occasion by his dog, who insisted on following him into the hall and
persisted in keeping at his heels while he danced,--a proof of its
fidelity which created considerable amusement, and which its master
turned to his personal account by saying he wished he could get any of
the lasses to like him as well as his dog. Jean heard his remark, and
not long afterwards, as he was passing through the washing-green where
she was bleaching clothes (from which she begged him to call off his
troublesome follower), she reminded him of it by asking him if he had
yet got any of the lasses to like him as well as did his dog? He got one
there and then; for from that hour Jean was attached to him and he to
Jean. He was reticent about his conquest, concealing it from his closest
friends, and even from his dearest foe, the Muse; but however reticent,
his conquest was not to be concealed, for Jean one day discovered that
she was with child. What he felt when this calamity was made known to
him we know not, for he kept his own counsel. What he wished his friends
to feel, if they could and would, we may divine from a poem which he
wrote about this time,--an address to the rigidly righteous, into whose
minds he sought to instill the charity of which he and Jean were sorely
in need:--

"Then gently scan your brother man,
Still gentler sister woman;
Though they may gang a kennin' wrang
To step aside is human:

"One point must still be greatly dark,
The moving why they do it;
And just as lamely can ye mark
How far perhaps they rue it."

He wrote a paper which he gave Jean, in the belief that it constituted a
marriag