our narrative. Apparently the young mine-manager found the lines
of his life by no means cast in pleasant places amid the rough
semi-savage community of Leadhills in those days. He felt himself a
stranger in a strange land. To better his lot, though he was still very
young, he determined to marry. The only family with which he could hold
intercourse on terms of equality, was that of William Bower, an English
mineralogist who had been brought from Derbyshire, to instruct the
Scottish miners more fully in the best methods then known for extracting
the metal from the refractory matrix. But to Robert Ramsay the chief
attraction in the family was the eldest daughter of his colleague, Alice
Bower, a vivacious, high-spirited girl, with a sufficient modicum, we
are told, of the Derbyshire breeziness of nature to render her
invincibly fascinating to the youth. Alone of all those around she
reminded him of the fair dames and damsels of Edinburgh. Therefore he
wooed and won her. Their marriage took place early in January 1686. In
the October of the same year the future poet was born.

But, alas! happiness was not long to be the portion of the wedded pair.
At the early age of twenty-four Robert Ramsay died, leaving his widow,
as regards this world's gear, but indifferently provided for, and,
moreover, burdened with an infant scarce twelve months old.

Probably the outlook for the future was so dark that the young widow
shrank from facing it. Be this as it may, we learn that three months
after Robert Ramsay was laid in his grave she married David Crichton,
finding a home for herself and a stepfather for the youthful Allan at
one and the same time. Crichton was a small peasant-proprietor, or
bonnet-laird, of the district. Though not endowed with much wealth, he
seems to have been in fairly comfortable circumstances, realising his
stepson's ideal in after-life, which he put into the mouth of his
Patie--

'He that hath just enough can soundly sleep;
The o'ercome only fashes fouk to keep.'

Much has been written regarding the supposed unhappiness of Ramsay's
boyhood in the household of his step-parent. For such a conclusion there
is not a tittle of evidence. Every recorded fact of their mutual
relations points the other way. David Crichton was evidently a man of
high moral principle and strength of character. Not by a hairbreadth did
he vary the treatment meted out to Allan from that accorded to his own
children by the wido