f Robert Bruce.
At that time the choir of the old church, which had contained the
grave, had been long demolished, and the new structure which now
covers it, had not yet been thought of. The sacred spot was only
marked by two broad flagstones, on which Burns knelt and kissed them,
reproaching the while the barbarity that had so dishonoured the
resting-place of Scotland's hero king. Then, with that sudden change
of mood, so characteristic of him, he passed within the ancient
church, and mounting the pulpit, addressed to his companion, who had,
at his desire, mounted the cutty stool, or seat of repentance, a
parody of the rebuke, which he himself had undergone some time before
at Mauchline.

CHAPTER IV. (p. 079)

SECOND WINTER IN EDINBURGH.

These summer and autumn wanderings ended, Burns returned to Edinburgh,
and spent there the next five months from the latter part of October,
1787, till the end of March, 1788, in a way which to any man, much
more to such an one as he, could give small satisfaction. The
ostensible cause of his lingering in Edinburgh was to obtain a
settlement with his procrastinating publisher, Creech, because till
this was effected, he had no money with which to enter on the
contemplated farm, or on any other regular way of life. Probably in
thus wasting his time, Burns may have been influenced more than he
himself was aware, by a secret hope that something might yet be done
for him--that all the smiles lavished on him by the great and powerful
could not possibly mean nothing, and that he should be left to drudge
on in poverty and obscurity as before.

During this winter Burns changed his quarters from Richmond's lodging
in High Street, where he had lived during the former winter, to a
house then marked 2, now 30, St. James's Square in the New Town. There
he lived with a Mr. Cruikshank, a colleague of his friend Nicol in the
High School, and there he continued to reside till he left Edinburgh.
More than once he paid brief visits to Nithsdale, and examined (p. 080)
again and yet again the farm on the Dalswinton property, on which he
had long had his eye. This was his only piece of serious business
during those months. The rest of his time was spent more or less in
the society of his jovial companions. We hear no more during this
second winter of his meetings with literary professors, able advocates
and judges, or fashionable ladies