Next morning James Rowland woke with the churning of the waves under the little Clyde steamboat in his ears, as if he were again on the deck waiting for the opening in the trees, and the sight of the white colonnade on the summit of its knoll, which brought with it the dazzle of the sunshine, the purity of the sweet fresh air, the twitter of the birds. How pleasant to have such a vision at waking, to realise with delight that all those pleasant things were henceforth to be the everyday circumstances of his life! But the next moment a cloud came over his face, for he recollected what it was that must be his occupation to-day. No shirking it any longer--no possibility of persuading himself that something else ought to be done first. That had been possible the first day: to see that their future home was comfortable--to make sure that it would be ready for them, surely that was a duty? But now he had accomplished it, and knew all about the house, there was nothing further to keep him back. I hope the reader will not think this perplexed father unnatural or unkind. As a matter of fact, he would have been, and probably would be, after this first obstacle was got over the kindest, the most fond of fathers. It was the consciousness of the great gulf between what, when he last saw his children, would have been right and natural for them, and what would be suitable and indeed necessary now--between what he himself was then, and what he was now, that overwhelmed him. They might be, in their hearts, everything the prudent father could desire, and yet be quite out of place at Rosmore, where he himself, if a little unpolished, would nevertheless be quite in his proper place. If they had been but the little children he remembered, who could have been trained into anything! Alas, these possibilities were all over. He dressed himself slowly, sighing from time to time, with an oppression on his heart that he could not account for, wishing now, after all, that Evelyn had been with him, who perhaps would have known better how to deal with the emergency. And he breakfasted very slowly, reading the _Herald_ in detail, and brooding over the paragraphs of local news which he did not understand after so many years of separation from Glasgow and its interests. At last the moment came when he could delay no longer. He had read the papers; he had finished his breakfast: he rose with a sigh and took his hat.