The taking down of the old house of four or five flats, called Gowanlock’s Land, in that part of the High Street which used to be called the Luckenbooths, has given rise to various stories connected with the building. Out of these I have selected a very strange legend--so strange, indeed, that, if not true, it must have been the production, _quod est in arte summa_, of a capital inventor; nor need I say that it is of much importance to talk of the authenticity of these things, for the most authentic are embellished by invention, and it is certainly the best embellished that live the longest; for all which we have very good reasons in human nature. Gowanlock’s Land, it would seem, merely occupied the site of an older house, which belonged, at the time of Prince Charlie’s occupation of the city, to an old town councillor of the name of Yellowlees. This older house was also one of many stories, an old form in Edinburgh, supposed to have been adopted from the French; but it had, which was not uncommon, an entry from the street running under an arch, and leading to the back of the premises to the lower part of the tenement, that part occupied by the councillor. There was a lower flat, and one above, which thus constituted an entire house; and which, moreover, rejoiced in the privilege of having an extensive garden, running down as far as the sheet of water called the North Loch, that secret “domestic witness,” as the ancients used to say, of many of the dark crimes of the old city. These gardens were the pride of the rich burghers of the time, decorated by Dutch-clipped hollies and trim boxwood walks; and in our special instance of Councillor Yellowlees’s retreat, there was in addition a summer-house, or rustic bower, standing at the bottom; that is, towards the north, and close upon the loch. I may mention also, that in consequence of the damp, this little bower was strewed with rushes for the very special comfort of Miss Annie Yellowlees, the only and much-petted child of the good councillor.