To have one night’s sport was his nightly and daily study for a long time.  It so happened that his mistress about this time was brought to bed.  Thomas hailed the bustle of that happy period as a fit time to compass his long meditated visit.  Mrs. Burns lay in the spence.  The gossips were met around the kitchen fire, listening to the howling of the storm which raged without, and thundered down the chimney:  it was a January blast.  Thomas kept his eye upon his master, who, with clasped “hands and uplifted eyes, sat in the muckle chair in the ingle neuk,” as if engaged in supplication at the Throne of Grace for the safety of his wife and child.  Thomas drew his chair nearer the door, and upon some little bustle in the kitchen, he reached the hallen, and was just emerging into darkness, when the hoarse voice of the angry Burns rung in the ears of the almost petrified ploughboy, “Where awa’, Tam?”

“The auld doure whalp,” muttered Tam, as he shut the door and resumed his stocking; “I was gaun to the door to see if the win’ was tirring the thack aff the riggin.”

“Thou needs na gang to look the night,” cried the rigid overseer of Doonholm, “when it is sae mirk, thou coudna’ see thy finger afore thee.”  It was indeed “a waefu’ nicht.”  Such a night as this might give rise to these admirable lines of that bard, about to be ushered into the world—­

  “That night a child might understand
  The deil had business on his hand.”

It was a little before the now pensive and thoughtful Burns was given to understand that a son was born unto him, as

  “The wind blew as ’twad blawn its last,

that a horrid crash was heard; a shriek rose from the affrighted women, as they drew their chairs nearer the fire.  “The ghaists and howlets that nightly cry about the ruins o’ Alloway’s auld haunted kirk” rose on every imagination.  The gudeman rose from his chair, lighted a lantern, commanded Thomas to follow him, and left the house.  The case was this—­the gable of the byre had been blown down, which, as it was of his own building, was not of the most durable nature.

In due time the joyful father had his first-born son laid in his arms:  his joy knew no bounds.  The bicker was now sent round with increasing rapidity; and Thomas, then in his fourteenth year, was carried to his bed, to use his own words, “between the late and the early, in a gude way, for the first time.”—­Such was the birth-night of the poet.

How long Thomas Reid remained in the service of William Burns does not appear.  It is certain, however, that he was with him when Robert first went to plough, as Thomas has repeatedly told, as an instance of Burns’s early addiction to reading, that he has seen him go to, and return from plough, with a book in his hand, and at meal-times “supping his parritch” with one hand and holding the book in the other.