"Nay, nay," replied the man, in a tone of deep reverence, "he was Rabbie Burns.

_I dare na speak to him_.

If he had been any other mon I would have said 'good morrow to ye.'" Beautiful and eloquent tribute, paid by an unlettered peasant, not to rank or to wealth, but to a soul--a mighty soul though clad in "hodden grey" like himself! The most interesting object was yet to be visited--the cottage of his birth, I entered it with reverence; and a well dressed, but very old, woman welcomed me in.

"This is the room," she said.

I looked around on the rough stone walls and could not believe that it ever contained such a soul; for the cottage, with all its subsequent repairs, was hardly equal to the generality of our early log cabins.