solitary state, he was happy, or he thought himself happy;
and that is much the same thing. But an accident occurred which led him
first to believe, and eventually to feel, that he was but a solitary and
comfortless moorland farmer, toiling for he knew not what, and laying up
treasure he knew not for whom. Yea, and while others had their wives
spinning, carding, knitting, and smiling before them, and their bairns
running laughing and sporting round about them, he was but a poor
deserted creature, with nobody to care for, or to care for him. Every
person had some object to strive for and to make them strive but Thomas
Hardie; or, to use his own words, he was "just in the situation o' a
tewhit that has lost its mate--_te-wheet! te-wheet!_ it cried, flapping
its wings impatiently and forlornly--and _te-wheet! te-wheet!_ answered
vacant echo frae the dreary glens."

Thomas had been to Morpeth disposing of a part of his hirsels, and he
had found a much better market for them than he anticipated. He
returned, therefore, with a heavy purse, which generally hath a tendency
to create a light and merry heart; and he arrived at Westruther, and
went into a hostel, where, three or four times in the year, he was in
the habit of spending a cheerful evening with his friends. He had called
for a quegh of the landlady's best, and he sat down at his ease with the
liquor before him, for he had but a short way to travel. He also pulled
out his tobacco-box and his pipe, and began to inhale the fumes of what,
up to that period, was almost a forbidden weed. But we question much if
the royal book of James the Sixth of Scotland and First of England,
which he published against the use of tobacco, ever found its way into
the Lammermoors, though the Indian weed did; therefore, Thomas Hardie
sat enjoying his glass and his pipe, unconscious or regardless of the
fulminations which he who was king in his boyhood, had published against
the latter. But he had not sat long, when a fair maiden, an acquaintance
of "mine hostess," entered the hostelry, and began to assist her in the
cutting out or fashioning of a crimson kirtle. Her voice fell upon the
ears of Thomas like the "music of sweet sounds." He had never heard a
voice before that not only fell softly on his ear, but left a lingering
murmur in his heart. She, too, was a young thing of not more than
eighteen. If ever hair might be called "gowden," it was hers. It was a
light and shining bronze, where t