own.

"It's no saying much for the breeding of the Almighty," she answered,
off-hand, with a smile, and she held silence concerning the matter,
although it was near upon four days before Burns entered the inn door
again, his face pale and haggard, his eyes sunken, and lines of
dissipation upon his handsome face, which every one by courtesy passed
over uncommented. He brought a volume of Shenstone with him, which he
laid before Nancy as a gift.

"I am bringing you one of the great of the earth," he said, gloomily
regarding the book, and Nancy, who read his thoughts and wanted from
the heart to cheer him, said:

"I whiles wonder at you, Mr. Burns, and the way you go about admiring
every tinker-peddler who tosses a rhyme together. Ye've no sense of
your own value at times. Do you know," she went on, fair glorious to
see in her enthusiasm glowering down at him--"Do you know that when
this man Shenstone's grave is as flat to the earth as my hand, and his
name forgot, people will be building monuments to you and raising
schools for your memory. Why," she cried, in an ecstasy, "'tis you that
have made our old mother Scotland able to hold up her head and look the
whole world in the face when the word 'Poetry' is called."

"Ye think so?" he asked, the tears big in his eyes, his gloom put
behind him. "It's music to hear ye praise me so," and he rose and
leaned against the mantel-shelf, his face irradiated by its usual
expression.

"Perhaps," he began with some hope, "when I say farewell to rakery once
and for all, I may make something fine yet. Most men, Mistress Stair,
shake hands with that irresponsible wench called Pleasure, but I have
dallied too long, I fear, in her intoxicating society. Aye!" he
finished, "Wisdom's late upon the road!"[5]

[5] It is strange to note that there is scarce a word spoken by
Burns in all of Lord Stair's manuscript which can not be found
directly or indirectly in the poet's prose or
verse--EDITOR.

"Let's make a poem of it! It sounds like one!" she cried, moving toward
the spinet.

"Take your own gate," says Burns, laughing; "I'll follow!"

"I'll take the first lines," she said gayly. "'Twill throw the brunt of
the rhyming on you."

"You're o'er thoughtful," Burns laughed back at her, and Nancy began
rhyming to an old tune the thought they had passed between them, with
Burns ready with his rhymes before her lines were entirely spoken:

_Nancy_

"At