nticity 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' 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.

All which you must take as introductory to the important fact that the
said Miss Annie, who, as a matter of course, was "very bonnie," as well
as passing rich to be, had been, somewhat previous to the prince's entry
to the town, pledged to be married to no less considerable a personage
than Maister John Menelaws, a son of him of the very same name who dealt
in pelts in a shop of the Canongate, and a student of medicine in the
Edinburgh University; but as the councillor had in his secret soul
hankerings after the prince, and the said student, John, was a red-hot
royalist, the marriage was suspended, all to the inexpressible grief of
our "bonnie Annie," who would not have given her John for all the
Charlies and Geordies to be found from Berwick to Lerwick. On the other
hand, while Annie was depressed, and forced to seek relief in solitary
musings in her bower by the loch, it is just