Strathspey, to Inverness. The most notable episode of the journey
northwards was a visit at the castle of the Duke of Athole, which
passed with great satisfaction to both Burns and his hosts, and of
which his _Humble Petition of Bruar Water_ is a poetical memorial. At
Stonehaven and Montrose he extended his acquaintance among his
father's relatives. He reached Edinburgh again on September sixteenth,
having traveled nearly six hundred miles. In October he made still
another excursion, through Clackmannanshire and into the south of
Perthshire, visiting Ramsay of Ochtertyre, near Stirling, and Sir
William Murray of Ochtertyre in Strathearn. In all these visits made
by Burns to the houses of the aristocracy, it is interesting to note
his capacity for pleasing and profitable intercourse with people of a
class and tradition far removed from his own. Sensitive to an extreme
and quick to resent a slight, he was at the same time finely
responsive to kindness, and his conduct was governed by a tact and
frank naturalness that are among the not least surprising of his
powers. In spite of the fervor and floridness of some of his
expressions of gratitude for favors from his noble friends, Burns was
no snob; and it was characteristic of him to give up a visit to the
Duchess of Gordon rather than separate from his companion Nicol, who,
in a fit of jealous sulks, refused to accompany him to Castle Gordon.

The settlement with Creech proved to be a very tedious affair, and in
the beginning of December the poet was about to leave the city in
disgust when an accident occurred which gave opportunity for one of
the most extraordinary episodes in the history of his relations with
women. Just before, he had met a Mrs. McLehose who lived in Edinburgh
with her three children, while her husband, from whom she had
separated on account of ill-treatment, had emigrated to Jamaica. A
correspondence began immediately after the first meeting, with the