’Now, by all that’s damnable, this is too much!’ he shouted, his very eyes becoming bloodshot. ’Canny, lad, canny,’ said Nicol, soothingly, accustomed to the poet in his cups. ’What’s up now?’ But it was no mere vinous rage that held the Bard. He was touched in his tenderest and sorest points—his independence and his sense of social inferiority. ’Up?’ he cried, ’up? Why, here’s a miserable hound of a pettifogging lawyer—a wretched, thin-blooded, whey-faced whipper-snapper that I could crush to the wall wi’ the one hand o’ me—has the damned impudence to infringe upon my liberties and tell me that he forbids me Mrs. Maclehose’s house!’ He tossed the letter to his friend, who read it with a kindling eye. Unluckily, it was couched in terms precisely those to enrage Nicol also, not merely as a partisan, but because he acridly resented the tone and attitude of a superior. ’"Persons not of her station, or known to her immediate circle,"’ he quoted with a sneer. ’And who is Master Herries that he writes so fine?’ ’Am I not telling you?’ cried Burns, irritably. ’A damned, pettifogging George Street writer, some cousin or guardian of my Clarinda, who, because he contributes a few paltry pence to the maintenance of her bairns, satisfies the miserable, half-inch soul of an unfeeling, cold-blooded, pitiful bigot by standing censor to everything she does that is above his dungeon bosom and foggy head! I’ve seen him but the once, but _I_ know him! Ay, and I’ll know him to some purpose now, be damned to him! Here, out of my light, man! Let me go—’ He had seized a cudgel from a corner of the room and apparently meditated an instant adjournment to the lawyer’s premises, so armed. But Nicol interceded. ’Wheesht, lad!’ he urged. ’Steady a wee thing, now! Wait a bittie and see if we cannot forge some prettier mischief to Master Herries than a mere thrashing. That’s like to be more of a scandal to you than to him. Trust him to have half-a-dozen lacqueys at his beck and call that would put you to the door or ever you could win by to the man. They know better, these lily-livered, dirty, skunking lawyer-bodies, than not to guard themselves well against honest men’s anger.’ Burns paused. Nicol’s counsels had generally some weight with him, more especially when, as at the present moment, after a merry afternoon, he was not perfectly certain of his actions. ’How’ll I win at him? How will I touch him?’ he said, flinging down the stick and frowning heavily. ’You’ve a full right to a pretty revenge,’ said his friend; ’and surely you can’t want of opportunity. The gate’s open to you that gives you entry to the man’s very hearth.’ ’Ay, that’s true,’ said Burns, with a grin, as he thought of the cosy fireside in the Potterrow. ’Can’t you make the fellow jealous?’ said Nicol.