in her poverty, how well she had done for herself. There was nothing which would have pleased James Rowland more than this. But fortunately he never had heard that Langley Ferrars was in the market. He was not even aware indeed at this early period where his future wife had lived, or what the name of her home had been. But she had said Scotland, which would be the best of all: and then suddenly had appeared before his eyes a vision of a house which he had often looked at when he went down the Clyde upon a holiday, or when there was some work at Greenock which he was entrusted with, as sometimes happened. Who can tell what visions of this kind steal into the brains of the working men in their noisy excursions, or the foundry lads with their sweethearts? Oftenest it is a cottage, perhaps a little cockney villa on the edge of a loch. “I’d like to tak’ ye there,” said with glowing eyes and all the ardour of youthful dreams: or, “Eh, man, if there was a bit housie like yon ahint ye, to gang back to when ye were past work,”--such speeches are common in the mouths of the excursionists, who live and die, and are contented enough, in the high “lands” and common stairs of the huge dull town. But James Rowland had been more ambitious. What he had remarked most had been a house, with a white colonnade round it, standing up on a green knoll at the end of a peninsula which overlooked the Clyde. There was one special spot from which he remembered to have watched for it, through the opening in the trees, not saying anything to any one, not even to Mary, but watching till it became visible--not a villa, nor a cottage, but a great house, with beautiful woods round it, and soft green lawns sloping downwards towards the noble river-sea, which just there flowed out into the opening of a loch. It suddenly came before him in a moment while he walked through the cantonments towards his own lodging in the arid _enceinte_ of the Station. Such a contrast! He felt as if he were again standing on the deck of the river steamboat, watching for the white walls, the pillars of the colonnade, as they appeared through the trees. He knew exactly at what moment the trees would stand aside, ranged into groups and lines, and the house would come into sight. He thought that if he had been blind, he would yet have known exactly when that opening came.