Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 5, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume II

MEN AND BOOKS
and, standing one on either bank, held a Bible
between them as they vowed eternal faith. Then
they exchanged Bibles, on one of which Burns,
for greater security, had inscribed texts as to the
binding nature of an oath ; and surely, if ceremony
can do aught to fix the wandering affections, here
were two people united for life. Mary came of a
superstitious family, so that she perhaps insisted on
these rites ; but they must have been eminently to
the taste of Burns at this period ; for nothing would
seem supei'fluous, and no oath great enough, to stay
his tottering constancy.
Events of consequence now happened thickly in
the poet's life. His book was announced ; the
Armours sought to summon him at law for the
ahment of the child; he lay here and there in
hiding to correct the sheets ; he was under an
engagement for Jamaica, where Mary was to join
him as his wife ; now he had ' orders within three
weeks at latest to repair aboard the Nancy, Captain
Smith ; ' now his chest was already on the road to
Greenock ; and now, in the wild autumn weather on
the moorland, he measures verses of farewell : —
' The bursting tears my heart declare ;
Farewell the bonny banks of Ayr ! '
But the great Master Dramatist had secretly another
intention for the piece ; by the most violent and
complicated solution, in which death and birth and
sudden fame all play a part as interposing deities, the
act-drop fell upon a scene of transformation. Jean
was brought to bed of twins, and, by an amicable
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