’I shall wait for Miss Graham,’ he said shortly, as he turned on his heel, ’if need be, till midnight.’ He returned to the parlour, where Jean had lit a candle, and continued his watch. Nancy, on her bed, tossed to and fro, a prey to perfect agony of mind. It was more than two hours since Alison had left the house. What had become of her? Here was Herries on the trail of some discovery. The wretched little woman saw herself upon the brink of ruin. She rolled over on her face, biting the sheet between her chattering teeth, stiff and cold, and in a kind of rigour. In a rage of obstinacy, Herries waited on. The wag-at-the-wall clock struck eight—the half-hour—then nine. He started up, and went to the servant in her kitchen. ’Jean,’ he said, and his voice had a curiously unnatural sound, ’I cannot get from your mistress where Miss Graham is gone. Can you tell me?’ The woman hesitated, and then spoke out, bursting, indeed, with a sense of Alison’s wrongs, though about, alas! only to add to them. ’Gone?’ she said. ’Weel ken I whar she’s gone! Just where she’s been too often, sir, though I say it that am but a sairvant—’ ’Take care what you do say,’ said Herries, sternly. ’I have ears for no idle gossip. Where did she go?’ ’To Burns’s lodging, sir,’ said Jean, setting fire to a long trail, ’and, sir—’ ’That’s enough,’ said Herries. His voice was quiet, but his action was like lightning, and, before the slow-moving Scotchwoman could put out a hand to stop him, or utter another word, he was out upon the stair and in the street, making for St. James’s Square as though the devil were after him. His haste undid him. Had he waited but a moment more, the flood-gates of Jean’s confidence would have been opened wide, and from the honest creature’s lips he would have learnt, if not the whole truth, yet enough to light him to the rest. But that was not to be. *CHAPTER XL.* There is no ground for supposing that during his Edinburgh sojourn, Robert Burns succumbed to those habits of intemperance which afterwards destroyed him. It was an age of drink, and he no doubt drank, as did nearly all his contemporaries, immoderately at times. But there is much to show that in these days he was sober in his habits, for the most part, and no record whatever that he disgraced himself by conspicuous over-indulgence. The end of his visit, however, was inevitably a time of trial in this respect. There were farewell visits to be paid to many a roystering character and tavern companion; and the nature of such farewells can easily be imagined, along with their result. On the day succeeding his last visit to the Potterrow, Burns drank heavily, impelled thereto by impulses less agreeable than those of mere good-fellowship. When he turned into his lodging, which he did only a few minutes before Herries reached the door, he was very drunk indeed.