The years passed, and I was again a dweller on the sea; but the ill-fortune which had hitherto tracked me like a bloodhound, seemed at length as if tired in the pursuit, and I was now the master of a West India trader, and had begun to lay the foundation of that competency which has secured to my declining years the quiet and comfort which, for the latter part of my life, it has been my happiness to enjoy. My vessel had arrived at Liverpool in the latter part of the year 1784, and I had taken coach for Irvine, to visit my mother, whom I had not seen for several years. There was a change of passengers at every stage; but I saw little in any of them to interest me, till within about a score of miles of my destination, when I met with an old respectable townsman, a friend of my father's. There was but another passenger in the coach, a north country gentleman from the West Indies. I had many questions to ask my townsman, and many to answer--and the time passed lightly away. "Can you tell me aught of the Burnses of Lochlea?" I inquired, after learning that my mother and other relatives were well. "I met with the young man Robert about five years ago, and have often since asked myself what special end providence could have in view in making such a man." "I was acquainted with old William Burns," said my companion, "when he was gardener at Denholm, an' got intimate wi' his son Robert when he lived wi' us at Irvine, a twalmonth syne. The faither died shortly ago, sairly straitened in his means, I'm feared, and no very square wi' the laird--an' ill wad he hae liked that, for an honester man never breathed. Robert, puir chield, is no very easy either." "In his circumstances?" I said. "Ay, an' waur:--he got entangled wi' the kirk on an unlucky sculduddery business, an' has been writing bitter, wicked ballads on a' the guid ministers in the country ever syne. I'm vexed it's on them he suld hae fallen; an' yet they hae been to blame too." "Robert Burns so entangled, so occupied!" I exclaimed; "you grieve and astonish me." "We are puir creatures, Matthew," said the old man; "strength an' weakness are often next door neighbours in the best o' us; nay, what is our vera strength taen on the ae side, may be our vera weakness taen on the ither. Never was there a stancher, firmer fallow than Robert Burns; an' now that he has taen a wrang step, puir chield, that vera stanchness seems just a weak want o' ability to yield. He has planted his foot where it lighted by mishanter, and a' the guid an' ill in Scotland wadna budge him frae the spot." "Dear me! that so powerful a mind should be so frivolously engaged! Making ballads, you say?--with what success?"