Some consternation followed upon this, for it was unknown by any of them that he had seen Nancy in Edinbro', and after the talk was readjusted a bit to the news, the five of them, with Mrs. Todd listening on the other side of the door, sat till hard upon one o'clock, with uplifted minds, insensible to time or weather.
The extreme disorder caused by the wind, for the storm had risen, at length recalled them to themselves, and Mrs. Todd, who worshiped the great poet, came in.
"You must lie here to-night, Mr. Burns," she said hospitably; and as the poet lighted Nancy up the stair:
"Good night," he cried, "good night!" and then, because there was a devil in the man whenever he looked at a pretty woman, "I'll have no sleep to-night. I'm in some far-up region where poems are made and where all the women are like you!"
For three days the horrid weather kept them housebound; three days in which Nancy and Robert Burns lived in dangerous nearness to each other, considering her youth, her temperament, and the passion of admiration which she held for him; three days of poetry and folk-tales and ballad-singing, with the man's dangerous magnetism at work between them.
It was on the afternoon of this third day that a girl passed the window near which Burns sat, and beckoning to him, he slammed out into the storm, with no prefacing word to his act whatever, leaving Nancy staring after him in amazement, as she said to Mr. Hamilton:
"Do you not think his manners are strange?"
"The Edinburgh people say that he had them straight from his Maker," Mr. Hamilton answered, evading an opinion of his 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: