While things had been going so badly on the farm his position in the Excise had been improving. After less than a year and a half in his laborious rural division he had wangled a transfer to a vacant ‘footwalk’, the ‘3d, or Tobacco, Division’, in Dumfries. This meant lighter work, and enabled him to dispense with his horse--not too soon, for his poor worn-out mare had given him several nasty falls on the bad roads, bruising him severely and once breaking his arm. In town, though, he had small opportunity for increasing his income through fines and penalties as he had done in the rural division. When at the end of 1791 he moved his family into Dumfries the best quarters he could afford were a crowded and uncomfortable half-of-a-house in the Stinking Vennel, near the river. He was still receiving only the minimum salary of £50 a year, and though Jean said long afterwards that they did not come empty-handed into Dumfries not much cash can have remained after he had discharged his debts. As early as March, 1790, he had estimated that he would be lucky if he did not lose more than £100 out of an investment of little more than £200. Such anticipatory estimates are oftener under the mark than over it; one suspects that if Burns recovered as much as £50 of the money he had put into Ellisland, he was lucky. By comparison, his prospects in the Excise were roseate. The Port Division in Dumfries, best paid of the subordinate posts, was vacant, and Burns lobbied for it with William Corbet, general supervisor of Excise, as he had done with Graham of Fintry for his first appointment. Corbet was an old friend of Mrs. Dunlop’s, and her intercession was effectively supplemented by a warm recommendation from Findlater, the local supervisor. Burns got the job early in 1792. The salary was £70 a year with various perquisites worth another £20. It scarcely represented luxurious living, but it was a better income than most Scottish schoolmasters or even ministers received in the eighteenth century, and though ‘Robin’s temper was not cold and frugal’ he managed to be fairly comfortable. After a year in the Stinking Vennel he moved to a better house in what was then called Mill Street and is now Burns Street--the last of his numerous abodes.