CHAPTER XII
I MEET A GREAT MAN
"With knowledge so vast and with judgment so strong
No man with the half of them e'er could go wrong;
With passion so potent, and fancies so bright,
No man with the half of them e'er could go right."
I passed as miserable a night as my worst enemy could have wished and was up at the dawning for a jaunt in the open. The gowans so white and bonny were swinging their dewy heads in the morning wind; the sea-fog was lifting skyward, and whether the message came from them I can not say, but a mystical white word floated between me and my troubled thoughts of Nancy—a word which means the changing of baser metal into pure gold, the returning of the balance to nature, the fine adjustment of spirit to mind and body—the great word Motherhood. Nancy as a mother. My Little Flower with a floweret of her own might be the solution of a happy marriage for her more than compensating for the independence and adulation which she had always had.
As I tramped along I came to a definite thought concerning the Burns poems as well, which was that I would set fire to them, as if by accident, that very day, and have them by and done with. And as for the man himself, it would, I thought, be no hard matter to keep him out of our lives; in which conclusions I left out just two things—the throw of Fate, which none of us can reckon upon, and my own rhyme-loving nature and fondness for being entertained.
It was Fate's throw with which I had to reckon first. I had come in my musings to a side-path which led from the old Abbey to the foot-bridge, when I heard the sound of a man's singing:
"As I cam in by Glenap,