There is a street in Glasgow which I remember long ago, and which was then called the Sauchiehall Road. Something picturesque in the name has kept a place in the recollection of a child, over--let us not imagine how many years; but it may be that a recollection so far off has confused the outlines of the street, or that in this age of change it may be completely altered, perhaps overrun with tall tenements, perhaps fallen into irremediable decay. In like manner I am not sure that it was the Sauchiehall Road in which the young Rowlands lived with their aunt, though I think it was; and the reader may here excuse the possibility of topographical error. It was a street in which there were many, according to a description exclusively and characteristically Scotch, “self-contained” houses of a small description, such as are not very usual in Scotland. So far as I remember, they were of a generally grimy kind, built in that dark complexioned stone which adds so much gloom to the often cloudy skies and damp atmosphere of the western city. These houses presented an aspect of faded gentility, and of having seen better days. But they were at the same time very attractive to people without any pretence at gentility, to whom the dignity of a front door and a house self-contained, in distinction to the more usual circumstances of a flat, was very tempting. It was in one of these houses that Mrs. Brown, who was Rowland’s sister-in-law, had established herself with her charges. It was one that was supposed to be among the best of the long row. It had a yard or two of what was called garden in front, almost filled with an elderberry tree, on which there were some dusty indications of coming blossom; and as the house had been recently painted, and had a bank of flowers in the parlour window, it was easily distinguishable from its neighbours, which were generally faded and dingy in appearance. To describe the beating of the heart with which Mr. Rowland knocked at that freshly painted green door would be almost more than words are equal to: a lover at the crisis of hope and fear, not knowing what was to be the answer to his suit, could not have been more agitated than this sober-minded, middle-aged man. It occurred to him at the last moment not to give his name, but to trust to his sister-in-law’s recognition of him, and thus have his first view of his children entirely without any warning. He had scarcely done this, however, before he began to think that to have given them the fullest warning would have been better, so that his first impressions should have been of their very best aspect prepared to please him. But this was only after it was too late to change.