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The three untamed princesses carried less regal concerns. As shadows fell, questions arose. Where would they sleep this night? Would they be able to locate Agnes’s cousins? Could they prosper as thieves in a new town?

One mile from Kilmarnock, the girls turned onto Glasgow Road and walked straight toward Dean Castle, built by Lord Boyd in 1457 and situated in a wooded glen, or “dean,” for which the palace was named. Two square towers, unequal in height, loomed over the enclosed courtyards and three-story palace. Barren orchards, weedy gardens, and overgrown rhododendron bushes blanketed the deserted estate.

Nineteenth-century Kilmarnock historian Archibald M’Kay offers this view of the castle: “Though grey and rent with years, it looks as if conscious of its strength, and as if frowning defiance down the valley that stretches before it. From the same eminences we have a glimpse of the town, with its towers and spires, which give it an air of importance; and the eye, ranging still farther, rests delighted on the beautiful green hills of Craigie.”10 A fairy-tale panorama welcomed three hungry, grumbling lasses. Kilmarnock’s grand entrance was nothing like Glasgow’s.

The Best-Laid Plans

The turn toward Kilmarnock revealed handsome villas adorned by wooded grounds and well-groomed shrubbery. Spires from eight churches poked their silhouettes through the waning afternoon light. Situated in a valley through which the rivers Kilmarnock and Irvine flow, the village was just two miles long and a half mile wide. It would be easy to find the heart of what the girls hoped was their new home. Glasgow Road merged with Wellington, then Portland, bringing the girls directly to the town’s center. Seven streets branched off Kilmarnock’s spacious and open town square, known as the Cross. Chimes rang from the Laigh Kirk (low church) tower clock that anchored the commercial center.

Agnes, Janet, and Helen had been on the road for more than ten hours. By chance they arrived in Kilmarnock on Robert Burns’s birthday, a celebration that had become a national holiday. Born two miles south of Kilmarnock on January 25, 1759, Scotland’s favorite bard had frequented the Cross on market days. Like Agnes, Burns had been born to the labor class, but he was fortunate to have lived in the country and received an education. A schoolmaster who visited farms in return for room and board taught Burns to read and write and introduced him to Shakespeare.

In July 1786, Burns, the impoverished farmer who wrote in his free time, shuffled into John Wilson’s print shop in Kilmarnock. After negotiating a good price for six hundred copies of Poems, chiefly in the Scottish dialect, Burns published his first edition. The village had offered a struggling writer the break he needed. Perhaps Agnes would find good luck here as well.

On this holiday night, traditional Burns suppers all across Scotland featured haggis, “tatties” (potatoes), and “neeps” (turnips), each course garnished with humorous toasts to the poet. A dessert course of sherry trifle or Caledonian cream was washed down with uisge beatha, Gaelic for “water of life,” or whiskey. After dinner, inebriated men in kilts roamed the alleyways and belted out Burns’s “Auld Lang Syne.” The Glasgow girls must have felt right at home and thought: Lord, we’ve gone to heaven. The town is crawling with rich drunks making for easy targets.

More pressing matters, however, consumed their attention. Sleeping in alleyways was not so easy in a small town. The charming red stone buildings on King Street, the main thoroughfare, offered no alcoves or doorways where they wouldn’t be noticed. On the lookout for a neighborhood not so posh, the girls followed King Street to a somewhat shabby lane called Croft. A sign outside Mr. Cairns’s lodging-house advertised rooms for rent.11 For a good night’s rest, it was worth spending the few coins they had left.

Shortly after daybreak on Tuesday, January 26, Agnes hauled herself out of bed and set out to find her cousins. The trio