"When she came in," Janet went on, "her face was white and set, her eyes seeing nothing, and when Rab Burns sent up his name to her that night she said to the maid, 'Tell Mr. Burns that Miss Stair will not see him!' and sat by the window, staring into the starlight, where I found her at five the next morning with the fever upon her and her wits gone gyte."
I have had much sorrow in my time, but the agony of suspense and suspicion with which the next few days were filled pales every grief of my life that went before this time. Was it possible, I asked God, that my wee bit, wonderful lassie, my Little Flower, had bloomed to be trodden under foot by a plowman of Ayr?
McMurtrie drove me from the house at times for rest of mind as well as exercise, and one night, at the week's end, having walked farther than usual, I entered an ale-house in the Cowgate for something to quench my thirst. There was a man standing by the window, and at sight of him, for it was Robert Burns, and the time was not yet come for me to say to him what might have to be said, I drew back, thinking myself unseen, and closed the door. I had gone but a few steps in the darkness when I felt a hand clapped on my shoulder, and turning, found Burns himself beside me.
"Come back," he cried, "come back; I want a word with ye, Lord Stair. You've come down," he cried, "to take your daughter from the company of those unfit for her to know. And you're right in it. But the thought that ye showed toward me when you went out to avoid my company is wrong; wrong, as I must face my Maker in the great last day! I've had my way with women; but in this one case I've taken such care of her as ye might hae done yourself!
"She's found the truth of me, and our friendship is by with forever! I know that well.
"But tell her from me, will ye not, that such righting of a wrong as can be done I am determined to do, and that the lassie she kens of is to be my wife as soon as she chooses. Tell her," and here the tears stood big in his eyes, "that I am sorrier than I can ever say that her mind has been assoiled by my wicked affairs—" and here he broke forth into a sudden heat—"God Almighty!" he cried, "if a woman like that had loved me, Shakespeare would have had to look to his laurels. Aye! and Fergusson, too. The Lord himself made me a poet, but she might have made me a man!"[6 ]
[ 6]Lord Stair mentions here that he afterward had from this same girl (Mrs. Nellie Brown), the following description of the poet's first meeting with the sister, Jean Armour:
"D'ye see Sam McClellan's spout over the gate there? Weel, it was just whaur Rab and Jean first foregathered. Her and me had gaen there for a gang o' water, an' I had fill't my cans first an' come ower here juist whaur you an' me's stan'in. When Jean was fillin' her stoups, Rab Burns cam' up an' began some nonsense or ither wi' her, an' they talked an' leuch sae lang that it juist made me mad; to think, tae, that she should ha'e a word to say wi' sic a lowse character as Rab Burns. When she at last cam' ower, I gied her a guid hecklin. 'Trowth,' said I, 'Jean, ye ocht to think black-burnin' shame o' yersel. Before bein' seen daffin' wi' Rab Burns, woman, I would far raither been seen speakin'—to a sodger.' That was the beginnin' o' the unfortunate acquaintance."