I never was more delighted, therefore, than with his company two days _tete-a-tete_. In a mixed company I should have made little of him; for, to use a gamester's phrase, he did not know when to play off, and when to play on.... When I asked, whether the Edinburgh literati had mended his poems by their criticisms, 'Sir,' said he, 'these gentlemen remind me of some spinsters in my country, who spin their thread so fine, that it is neither fit for weft nor woof." There are other incidents recorded of that time. Among these was a visit to Mrs. Bruce, an old Scottish dame of ninety, who lived in the ancient Tower of Clackmannan, upholding her dignity as the lineal descendant and representative of the family of King Robert Bruce, (p. 078) and cherishing the strongest attachment to the exiled Stuarts. Both of these sentiments found a ready response from Burns. The one was exemplified by the old lady conferring knighthood on him and his companion with the actual sword of King Robert, which she had in her possession, remarking as she did it, that she had a better right to confer the title than some folk. Another sentiment she charmed the poet by expressing in the toast she gave after dinner, "_Hooi Uncos_," that is, Away Strangers, a word used by shepherds when they bid their collies drive away strange sheep. Who the strangers were in this case may be guessed from her known Jacobite sentiments. On his way from Clackmannan to Edinburgh he turned aside to see Loch Leven and its island castle, which had been the prison of the hapless Mary Stuart; and thence passing to the Norman Abbey Church of Dunfermline, with deep emotion he looked on the grave of Robert Bruce. At that time the choir of the old church, which had contained the grave, had been long demolished, and the new structure which now covers it, had not yet been thought of. The sacred spot was only marked by two broad flagstones, on which Burns knelt and kissed them, reproaching the while the barbarity that had so dishonoured the resting-place of Scotland's hero king. Then, with that sudden change of mood, so characteristic of him, he passed within the ancient church, and mounting the pulpit, addressed to his companion, who had, at his desire, mounted the cutty stool, or seat of repentance, a parody of the rebuke, which he himself had undergone some time before at Mauchline. CHAPTER IV. (p. 079) SECOND WINTER IN EDINBURGH.