The evening passed. To all outward appearances it was a musical evening of undeniable edification to all concerned, when a great poet might have been seen unbending himself, and honouring, with much gallant attention, the accomplished young lady who helped him with her harp and song. Nancy sat in her accustomed place, wreathed in smiles, and dispensing sugared words and glances. Herries, indeed, was totally silent, but it might have been the silence of appreciation. Alison and her harp, the poet seated near her, made a central and striking group in the little room. How fair—how singularly fair—she looked that night! So, at least, it seemed to her lover, watching her from under lowered lids, with anger—the anger of love and longing—at his heart. The poet, too, looked well: strong, manly, massive. Herries, as he watched him bend over Alison that fine frame and splendid head, hated him at that moment, not, I fear, for his vices, but for his thews and sinews, his sun-browned comeliness and daring eye. Like many men, slenderly moulded, and of delicate constitution, Herries had a passionate and jealous admiration of manly beauty hardened and developed by all out-door and vigorous pursuits. Necessity had doomed him to a sedentary life, but it was against every taste and inclination, every instinct of his being. He felt now, angrily, that this creature—this ploughman—belittled him. Certainly the contrast between them was sufficiently striking; it was the contrast between porcelain and bronze. Yet never had the peculiar grace of Herries, the marked refinement, the purity of his chiselled face, shone more by contrast. So, at least, it seemed to one who saw him, whenever she dared steal a glance upon her angry Jove. They could not make much headway with the song that night, probably because Alison’s wits were wandering. Burns was working up, after his usual methods, the ’Lassie wi’ the Lint White Locks,’ some fag-end of an old, forgotten country catch, which he set in the jewels of his own deathless words, and sought to match to some old tune. Alison had found the air; over and over again she played it, and sang the words as the poet said, them at her ear. The little room seemed full of the air, of the words, of the spirit of song:— _’Lassie wi’ the lint white locks,_ _Bonnie lassie, artless lassie!_ _Wilt thou wi’ me tend the flocks?_ _Wilt thou be my dearie, O?’_ Over and over and over again—the little fleering, jeering, heartless tune, with yet its sub-note of pathos and of pain, the tinkle of the harp, the girlish voice singing, the poet’s deeper tones in speech. Herries had no ear for music or for verse, yet that air and those words stayed with him all his life. He could never hear a boy whistle the one, or a lass lilt the other at her work, without an unbearable stab of pain.