been fully occupied with the concerns of others.

But there were times when the miserable luxury of dwelling upon his
own affairs was his--when he lay down in his bed till he fell into
restless sleep--when the point to which his steps tended in his
walks was ascertained. Then he gave himself up to memory, and regret
which often deepened into despair, and but seldom was cheered by
hope.

He grew so impatient of the ignorance in which he was kept--for in
those days of heavy postage any correspondence he might have had on
mere Monkshaven intelligence was very limited--as to the affairs at
Haytersbank, that he cut out an advertisement respecting some new
kind of plough, from a newspaper that lay in the chop-house where he
usually dined, and rising early the next morning he employed the
time thus gained in going round to the shop where these new ploughs
were sold.

That night he wrote another letter to Daniel Robson, with a long
account of the merits of the implements he had that day seen. With a
sick heart and a hesitating hand, he wound up with a message of
regard to his aunt and to Sylvia; an expression of regard which he
dared not make as warm as he wished, and which, consequently, fell
below the usual mark attained by such messages, and would have
appeared to any one who cared to think about it as cold and formal.

When this letter was despatched, Hepburn began to wonder what he had
hoped for in writing it. He knew that Daniel could write--or rather
that he could make strange hieroglyphics, the meaning of which
puzzled others and often himself; but these pen-and-ink signs were