The stone-wall around the graveyard was dilapidated, and in parts was falling down.
"I suppose this old wall was here in Burns's time," I said.
"Ay, yes," said the bell-ringer; and pointing to a low, thatched cottage just outside it, "and yon shop—many's the time he's been in it playin' his tricks."
The landlord of the inn now came running up, with profuse apologies for the ill success of his mission. He had been to the head Mason, hoping he would come over and assist in the opening of the chest, in which were kept a Mason's apron worn by Burns, some jewels of his, and a book of minutes kept by him. But "bein' 's it's the Sabbath," and "he's sick in bed," and it was "against the rules to open the regalia chest unless three Masons were present," the kindly landlord, piling up reason after reason, irrespective of their consistency with each other, went on to explain that it would be impossible; but I might see the chair in which Burns always sat. This was a huge oaken chair, black with age, and furrowed with names cut deep in the wood. It was shaped and proportioned like a child's high-chair, and had precisely such a rest for the feet as is put on children's high-chairs. To this day the Grand Mason sits in it at their meetings, and will so long as the St. James Lodge exists.
"They've been offered hundreds of pounds for that chair, mem, plain as it is. You'd not think it; but there's no money'd buy it from the lodge," said the landlord.
The old club-house where the jolly "Bachelors of Tarbolton" met in Burns's day is a low, two-roomed, thatched cottage, half in ruins. The room where the bachelors smoked, drank, and sang is now little more than a cellar filled with rubbish and filth,—nothing left but the old fireplace to show that it was ever inhabited. In the other half of the cottage lives a laborer's family,—father, mother, and a young child: their one room, with its bed built into the wall, and their few delf dishes on the dresser, is probably much like the room in which Burns first opened his wondrous eyes. The man was lying on the floor playing with his baby. At the name of Burns, he sprang up with a hearty "Ay, weel," and ran out in his blue-stocking feet to show me the cellar, of which, it was plainly to be seen, he was far prouder than of his more comfortable side of the house. The name by which the inn was called in Burns's day he did not know. But "He's a Mason over there; he'll know," he cried; and before I could prevent him, he had darted, still shoeless, across the road, and asked the question of a yet poorer laborer, who was taking his Sunday on his door-sill with two bairns between his knees. He had heard, but had "forgotten." "Feyther'll know," said the wife, coming forward with the third bairn, a baby, in her arms. "I'll rin an' ask feyther." The old man tottered out, and gazed with a vacant, feeble look at me, while he replied impatiently to his daughter: "Manson's Inn, 't was called; ye've heard it times eneuch."
"I dare say you always drink Burns's health at the lodge when you meet," I said to the laborer.
"Ay, ay, his health's ay dronkit," he said, with a coarse laugh, "weel dronkit."
A few rods to the east, and down the very road Burns was wont to come and go between Lochlea and Tarbolton, still stands "Willie's mill,"—cottage and mill and shed and barn, all in one low, long, oddly joined (or jointed) building of irregular heights, like a telescope pulled out to its full length; a little brook and a bit of gay garden in front. In the winter the mill goes by water from a lake near by; in the summer by steam,—a great change since the night when Burns went
"Todlin' down on Willie's mill,"