"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." The marriage between the two was acknowledged to the world in 1787.--EDITOR. CHAPTER XIX THE QUARREL BETWEEN DANVERS AND NANCY We were back at Stair for nearly a fortnight, with Nancy quite herself again, before she took me into her confidence regarding the Burns experience. Leaning against the wall by the stair-foot with her hands behind her, a way she'd had ever since she was a wee bit, the talk began, with no leading up to it on either side. "Jock," she said, suddenly, and a quaint look came over her face, "I've never told you what made me ill at Mauchline." "I've been waiting," I answered. "It was a bad time for me," she continued. "I know that, Lady-bird," said I. "Part of me died," she said, and on this a thought flashed by me which, I have often held, that in some way her language expressed more than she knew. "I've been filled up with conceit of myself," she went on, "and I got punished for it." "There was never a woman living with less!" I cried, so sodden in my affection for her that I could not stand to hear her blamed, even by herself.