The Black Dwarf
by Walter Scott
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman

CONTENTS.

I.   Tales of my Landlord
        - Introduction by "Jedediah Cleishbotham"
II.  Introduction to THE BLACK DWARF
III. Main text of THE BLACK DWARF

I. TALES OF MY LANDLORD

COLLECTED AND REPORTED BY JEDEDIAH CLEISHBOTHAM,
SCHOOLMASTER AND PARISH-CLERK OF GANDERCLEUGH.

INTRODUCTION.

As I may, without vanity, presume that the name and official
description prefixed to this Proem will secure it, from the
sedate and reflecting part of mankind, to whom only I would be
understood to address myself, such attention as is due to the
sedulous instructor of youth, and the careful performer of my
Sabbath duties, I will forbear to hold up a candle to the
daylight, or to point out to the judicious those recommendations
of my labours which they must necessarily anticipate from the
perusal of the title-page. Nevertheless, I am not unaware, that,
as Envy always dogs Merit at the heels, there may be those who
will whisper, that albeit my learning and good principles cannot
(lauded be the heavens) be denied by any one, yet that my
situation at Gandercleugh hath been more favourable to my
acquisitions in learning than to the enlargement of my views of
the ways and works of the present generation. To the which
objection, if, peradventure, any such shall be started, my answer
shall be threefold:

First, Gandercleugh is, as it were, the central part--the navel
(SI FAS SIT DICERE) of this our native realm of Scotland; so that
men, from every corner thereof, when travelling on their
concernments of business, either towards our metropolis of law,
by which I mean Edinburgh, or towards our metropolis and mart of
gain, whereby I insinuate Glasgow, are frequently led to make
Gandercleugh their abiding stage and place of rest for the night.
And it must be acknowledged by the most sceptical, that I, who
have sat in the leathern armchair, on the left-hand side of the
fire, in the common room of the Wallace Inn, winter and summer,
for every evening in my life, during forty years bypast (the
Christian Sabbaths only excepted), must have seen more of the
manners and customs of various tribes and people, than if I had
sought them out by my own painful travel and bodily labour. Even
so doth the tollman at the well-frequented turn-pike on the
Wellbraehead, sitting at his ease in his own dwelling, gather
more receipt of custom, than if, moving forth upon the road, he
were to require a contribution from each person whom he chanced
to meet in his journey, when, according to the vulgar adage, he
might possibly be greeted with more kicks than halfpence.

But, secondly, supposing it again urged, that Ithacus, the most
wise of the Greeks, acquired his renown, as the Roman poet hath
assured us, by visiting states and men, I reply to the Zoilus who
shall adhere to this objection, that, DE FACTO, I have seen
states and men also; for I have visited the famous cities of
Edinburgh and Glasgow, the former twice, and the latter three
times, in the course of my earthly pilgrimage. And, moreover, I
had the honour to sit in the General Assembly (meaning, as an
auditor, in the galleries thereof), and have heard as much goodly
speaking on the law of patronage, as, with the fructification
thereof in mine own understanding, hath made me be considered as
an oracle upon that doctrine ever since my safe and happy return
to Gandercleugh.

Again--and thirdly, If it be nevertheless pretended that my
information and knowledge of mankind, however extensive, and
however painfully acquired, by constant domestic enquiry, and by
foreign travel, is, natheless, incompetent to the task of
recording the pleasant narratives of my Landlord, I will let
these critics know, to their own eternal shame and confusion as
well as to the abashment and discomfiture of all who shall rashly
take up a song against me, that I am NOT the writer, redacter, or
compiler, of the Tales of my Landlord; nor am I, in one single
iota, answerable for their contents, more or less. And now, ye
generation of critics, who raise yourselves up as if it were
brazen serpents, to hiss with your tongues, and to smite with
your stings, bow yourselves down to your native dust, and
acknowledge that yours have been the thoughts of ignorance, and
the words of vain foolishness. Lo! ye are caught in your own
snare, and your own pit hath yawned for you. Turn, then, aside
from the task that is too heavy for you; destroy not your teeth
by gnawing a file; waste not your strength by spurning against a
castle wall; nor spend your breath in contending in swiftness
with a fleet steed; and let those weigh the Tales of my Landlord,
who shall bring with them the scales of candour cleansed from the
rust of prejudice by the hands of intelligent modesty. For these
alone they were compiled, as will appear from a brief narrative
which my zeal for truth compelled me to make supplementary to the
present Proem.

It is well known that my Landlord was a pleasing and a facetious
man, acceptable unto all the parish of Gandercleugh, excepting
only the Laird, the Exciseman, and those for whom he refused to
draw liquor upon trust. Their causes of dislike I will touch
separately, adding my own refutation thereof.

His honour, the Laird, accused our Landlord, deceased, of having
encouraged, in various times and places, the destruction of
hares, rabbits, fowls black and grey, partridges, moor-pouts,
roe-deer, and other birds and quadrupeds, at unlawful seasons,
and contrary to the laws of this realm, which have secured, in
their wisdom, the slaughter of such animals for the great of the
earth, whom I have remarked to take an uncommon (though to me, an
unintelligible) pleasure therein. Now, in humble deference to
his honour, and in justifiable defence of my friend deceased, I
reply to this charge, that howsoever the form of such animals
might appear to be similar to those so protected by the law, yet
it was a mere DECEPTIO VISUS; for what resembled hares were, in
fact, HILL-KIDS, and those partaking of the appearance of moor-
fowl, were truly WOOD PIGEONS and consumed and eaten EO NOMINE,
and not otherwise.

Again, the Exciseman pretended, that my deceased Landlord did
encourage that species of manufacture called distillation,
without having an especial permission from the Great, technically
called a license, for doing so. Now, I stand up to confront this
falsehood; and in defiance of him, his gauging-stick, and pen and
inkhorn, I tell him, that I never saw, or tasted, a glass of
unlawful aqua vitae in the house of my Landlord; nay, that, on
the contrary, we needed not such devices, in respect of a
pleasing and somewhat seductive liquor, which was vended and
consumed at the Wallace Inn, under the name of MOUNTAIN DEW. If
there is a penalty against manufacturing such a liquor, let him
show me the statute; and when he does, I'll tell him if I will
obey it or no.

Concerning those who came to my Landlord for liquor, and went
thirsty away, for lack of present coin, or future credit, I
cannot but say it has grieved my bowels as if the case had been
mine own. Nevertheless, my Landlord considered the necessities
of a thirsty soul, and would permit them, in extreme need, and
when their soul was impoverished for lack of moisture, to drink
to the full value of their watches and wearing apparel,
exclusively of their inferior habiliments, which he was uniformly
inexorable in obliging them to retain, for the credit of the
house. As to mine own part, I may well say, that he never
refused me that modicum of refreshment with which I am wont to
recruit nature after the fatigues of my school. It is true, I
taught his five sons English and Latin, writing, book-keeping,
with a tincture of mathematics, and that I instructed his
daughter in psalmody. Nor do I remember me of any fee or
HONORARIUM received from him on account of these my labours,
except the compotations aforesaid. Nevertheless this
compensation suited my humour well, since it is a hard sentence
to bid a dry throat wait till quarter-day.

But, truly, were I to speak my simple conceit and belief, I think
my Landlord was chiefly moved to waive in my behalf the usual
requisition of a symbol, or reckoning, from the pleasure he was
wont to take in my conversation, which, though solid and edifying
in the main, was, like a well-built palace, decorated with
facetious narratives and devices, tending much to the enhancement
and ornament thereof. And so pleased was my Landlord of the
Wallace in his replies during such colloquies, that there was no
district in Scotland, yea, and no peculiar, and, as it were,
distinctive custom therein practised, but was discussed betwixt
us; insomuch, that those who stood by were wont to say, it was
worth a bottle of ale to hear us communicate with each other.
And not a few travellers, from distant parts, as well as from the
remote districts of our kingdom, were wont to mingle in the
conversation, and to tell news that had been gathered in foreign
lands, or preserved from oblivion in this our own.

Now I chanced to have contracted for teaching the lower classes
with a young person called Peter, or Patrick, Pattieson, who had
been educated for our Holy Kirk, yea, had, by the license of
presbytery, his voice opened therein as a preacher, who delighted
in the collection of olden tales and legends, and in garnishing
them with the flowers of poesy, whereof he was a vain and
frivolous professor. For he followed not the example of those
strong poets whom I preposed to him as a pattern, but formed
versification of a flimsy and modern texture, to the compounding
whereof was necessary small pains and less thought. And hence I
have chid him as being one of those who bring forward the fatal
revolution prophesied by Mr. Robert Carey, in his Vaticination on
the Death of the celebrated Dr. John Donne:

Now thou art gone, and thy strict laws will be
Too hard for libertines in poetry;
Till verse (by thee refined) in this last age
Turn ballad rhyme.

I had also disputations with him touching his indulging rather a
flowing and redundant than a concise and stately diction in his
prose exercitations. But notwithstanding these symptoms of
inferior taste, and a humour of contradicting his betters upon
passages of dubious construction in Latin authors, I did
grievously lament when Peter Pattieson was removed from me by
death, even as if he had been the offspring of my own loins. And
in respect his papers had been left in my care (to answer funeral
and death-bed expenses), I conceived myself entitled to dispose
of one parcel thereof, entitled, "Tales of my Landlord," to one
cunning in the trade (as it is called) of bookselling. He was a
mirthful man, of small stature, cunning in counterfeiting of
voices, and in making facetious tales and responses, and whom I
have to laud for the truth of his dealings towards me.

Now, therefore, the world may see the injustice that charges me
with incapacity to write these narratives, seeing, that though I
have proved that I could have written them if I would, yet, not
having done so, the censure will deservedly fall, if at all due,
upon the memory of Mr. Peter Pattieson; whereas I must be justly
entitled to the praise, when any is due, seeing that, as the Dean
of St. Patrick's wittily and logically expresseth it,

That without which a thing is not,
  Is CAUSA SINE QUA NON.

The work, therefore, is unto me as a child is to a parent; in the
which child, if it proveth worthy, the parent hath honour and
praise; but, if otherwise, the disgrace will deservedly attach to
itself alone.

I have only further to intimate, that Mr. Peter Pattieson, in
arranging these Tales for the press, hath more consulted his own
fancy than the accuracy of the narrative; nay, that he hath
sometimes blended two or three stories together for the mere
grace of his plots. Of which infidelity, although I disapprove
and enter my testimony against it, yet I have not taken upon me
to correct the same, in respect it was the will of the deceased,
that his manuscript should be submitted to the press without
diminution or alteration. A fanciful nicety it was on the part
of my deceased friend, who, if thinking wisely, ought rather to
have conjured me, by all the tender ties of our friendship and
common pursuits, to have carefully revised, altered, and
augmented, at my judgment and discretion. But the will of the
dead must be scrupulously obeyed, even when we weep over their
pertinacity and self-delusion. So, gentle reader, I bid you
farewell, recommending you to such fare as the mountains of your
own country produce; and I will only farther premise, that each
Tale is preceded by a short introduction, mentioning the persons
by whom, and the circumstances under which, the materials thereof
were collected.

JEDEDIAH CLEISHBOTHAM.

*

II. INTRODUCTION  to  THE  BLACK  DWARF.

The ideal being who is here presented as residing in solitude,
and haunted by a consciousness of his own deformity, and a
suspicion of his being generally subjected to the scorn of his
fellow-men, is not altogether imaginary. An individual existed
many years since, under the author's observation, which suggested
such a character. This poor unfortunate man's name was David
Ritchie, a native of Tweeddale. He was the son of a labourer in
the slate-quarries of Stobo, and must have been born in the
misshapen form which he exhibited, though he sometimes imputed it
to ill-usage when in infancy. He was bred a brush-maker at
Edinburgh, and had wandered to several places, working at his
trade, from all which he was chased by the disagreeable attention
which his hideous singularity of form and face attracted wherever
he came. The author understood him to say he had even been in
Dublin.

Tired at length of being the object of shouts, laughter, and
derision, David Ritchie resolved, like a deer hunted from the
herd, to retreat to some wilderness, where he might have the
least possible communication with the world which scoffed at him.
He settled himself, with this view, upon a patch of wild moorland
at the bottom of a bank on the farm of Woodhouse, in the
sequestered vale of the small river Manor, in Peeblesshire. The
few people who had occasion to pass that way were much surprised,
and some superstitious persons a little alarmed, to see so
strange a figure as Bow'd Davie (i.e. Crooked David) employed in
a task, for which he seemed so totally unfit, as that of erecting
a house. The cottage which he built was extremely small, but the
walls, as well as those of a little garden that surrounded it,
were constructed with an ambitious degree of solidity, being
composed of layers of large stones and turf; and some of the
corner stones were so weighty, as to puzzle the spectators how
such a person as the architect could possibly have raised them.
In fact, David received from passengers, or those who came
attracted by curiosity, a good deal of assistance; and as no one
knew how much aid had been given by others, the wonder of each
individual remained undiminished.

The proprietor of the ground, the late Sir James Naesmith,
baronet, chanced to pass this singular dwelling, which, having
been placed there without right or leave asked or given, formed
an exact parallel with Falstaff's simile of a "fair house built
on another's ground;" so that poor David might have lost his
edifice by mistaking the property where he had erected it. Of
course, the proprietor entertained no idea of exacting such a
forfeiture, but readily sanctioned the harmless encroachment.

The personal description of Elshender of Mucklestane-Moor has
been generally allowed to be a tolerably exact and unexaggerated
portrait of David of Manor Water. He was not quite three feet
and a half high, since he could stand upright in the door of his
mansion, which was just that height. The following particulars
concerning his figure and temper occur in the SCOTS MAGAZINE for
1817, and are now understood to have been communicated by the
ingenious Mr. Robert Chambers of Edinburgh, who has recorded with
much spirit the traditions of the Good Town, and, in other
publications, largely and agreeably added to the stock of our
popular antiquities. He is the countryman of David Ritchie, and
had the best access to collect anecdotes of him.

"His skull," says this authority, "which was of an oblong and
rather unusual shape, was said to be of such strength, that he
could strike it with ease through the panel of a door, or the end
of a barrel. His laugh is said to have been quite horrible; and
his screech-owl voice, shrill, uncouth, and dissonant,
corresponded well with his other peculiarities.

"There was nothing very uncommon about his dress. He usually
wore an old slouched hat when he went abroad; and when at home, a
sort of cowl or night-cap. He never wore shoes, being unable to
adapt them to his mis-shapen finlike feet, but always had both
feet and legs quite concealed, and wrapt up with pieces of cloth.
He always walked with a sort of pole or pike-staff, considerably
taller than himself. His habits were, in many respects,
singular, and indicated a mind congenial to its uncouth
tabernacle. A jealous, misanthropical, and irritable temper, was
his prominent characteristic. The sense of his deformity haunted
him like a phantom. And the insults and scorn to which this
exposed him, had poisoned his heart with fierce and bitter
feelings, which, from other points in his character, do not
appear to have been more largely infused into his original
temperament than that of his fellow-men.

"He detested children, on account of their propensity to insult
and persecute him. To strangers he was generally reserved,
crabbed, and surly; and though he by no means refused assistance
or charity, he seldom either expressed or exhibited much
gratitude. Even towards persons who had been his greatest
benefactors, and who possessed the greatest share of his good-
will, he frequently displayed much caprice and jealousy. A lady
who had known him from his infancy, and who has furnished us in
the most obliging manner with some particulars respecting him,
says, that although Davie showed as much respect and attachment
to her father's family, as it was in his nature to show to any,
yet they were always obliged to be very cautious in their
deportment towards him. One day, having gone to visit him with
another lady, he took them through his garden, and was showing
them, with much pride and good-humour, all his rich and
tastefully assorted borders, when they happened to stop near a
plot of cabbages which had been somewhat injured by the
caterpillars. Davie, observing one of the ladies smile,
instantly assumed his savage, scowling aspect, rushed among the
cabbages, and dashed them to pieces with his KENT, exclaiming, 'I
hate the worms, for they mock me!'

"Another lady, likewise a friend and old acquaintance of his,
very unintentionally gave David mortal offence on a similar
occasion. Throwing back his jealous glance as he was ushering
her into his garden, he fancied he observed her spit, and
exclaimed, with great ferocity, 'Am I a toad, woman! that ye spit
at me--that ye spit at me?'  and without listening to any answer
or excuse, drove her out of his garden with imprecations and
insult. When irritated by persons for whom he entertained little
respect, his misanthropy displayed itself in words, and sometimes
in actions, of still greater rudeness; and he used on such
occasions the most unusual and singularly savage imprecations and
threats." [SCOTS MAGAZINE, vol. lxxx. p.207.]

Nature maintains a certain balance of good and evil in all her
works; and there is no state perhaps so utterly desolate, which
does not possess some source of gratification peculiar to itself,
This poor man, whose misanthropy was founded in a sense on his
own preternatural deformity, had yet his own particular
enjoyments. Driven into solitude, he became an admirer of the
beauties of nature. His garden, which he sedulously cultivated,
and from a piece of wild moorland made a very productive spot,
was his pride and his delight; but he was also an admirer of more
natural beauty: the soft sweep of the green hill, the bubbling
of a clear fountain, or the complexities of a wild thicket, were
scenes on which he often gazed for hours, and, as he said, with
inexpressible delight. It was perhaps for this reason that he
was fond of Shenstone's pastorals, and some parts of PARADISE
LOST. The author has heard his most unmusical voice repeat the
celebrated description of Paradise, which he seemed fully to
appreciate. His other studies were of a different cast, chiefly
polemical. He never went to the parish church, and was therefore
suspected of entertaining heterodox opinions, though his
objection was probably to the concourse of spectators, to whom he
must have exposed his unseemly deformity. He spoke of a future
state with intense feeling, and even with tears. He expressed
disgust at the idea, of his remains being mixed with the common
rubbish, as he called it, of the churchyard, and selected with
his usual taste a beautiful and wild spot in the glen where he
had his hermitage, in which to take his last repose. He changed
his mind, however, and was finally interred in the common burial-
ground of Manor parish.

The author has invested Wise Elshie with some qualities which
made him appear, in the eyes of the vulgar, a man possessed of
supernatural power. Common fame paid David Ritchie a similar
compliment, for some of the poor and ignorant, as well as all the
children, in the neighbourhood, held him to be what is called
uncanny. He himself did not altogether discourage the idea; it
enlarged his very limited circle of power, and in so far
gratified his conceit; and it soothed his misanthropy, by
increasing his means of giving terror or pain. But even in a
rude Scottish glen thirty years back, the fear of sorcery was
very much out of date.

David Ritchie affected to frequent solitary scenes, especially
such as were supposed to be haunted, and valued himself upon his
courage in doing so. To be sure he had little chance of meeting
anything more ugly than himself. At heart, he was superstitious,
and planted many rowans (mountain ashes) around his hut, as a
certain defence against necromancy. For the same reason,
doubtless, he desired to have rowan-trees set above his grave.

We have stated that David Ritchie loved objects of natural
beauty. His only living favourites were a dog and a cat, to
which he was particularly attached, and his bees, which he
treated with great care. He took a sister, latterly, to live in
a hut adjacent to his own, but he did not permit her to enter it.
She was weak in intellect, but not deformed in person; simple, or
rather silly, but not, like her brother, sullen or bizarre.
David was never affectionate to her; it was not in his nature;
but he endured her. He maintained himself and her by the sale of
the product of their garden and bee-hives; and, latterly, they
had a small allowance from the parish. Indeed, in the simple and
patriarchal state in which the country then was, persons in the
situation of David and his sister were sure to be supported.
They had only to apply to the next gentleman or respectable
farmer, and were sure to find them equally ready and willing to
supply their very moderate wants. David often received
gratuities from strangers, which he never asked, never refused,
and never seemed to consider as an obligation. He had a right,
indeed, to regard himself as one of Nature's paupers, to whom she
gave a title to be maintained by his kind, even by that deformity
which closed against him all ordinary ways of supporting himself
by his own labour. Besides, a bag was suspended in the mill for
David Ritchie's benefit; and those who were carrying home a
melder of meal, seldom failed to add a GOWPEN [Handful] to the
alms-bag of the deformed cripple. In short, David had no
occasion for money, save to purchase snuff, his only luxury, in
which he indulged himself liberally. When he died, in the
beginning of the present century, he was found to have hoarded
about twenty pounds, a habit very consistent with his
disposition; for wealth is power, and power was what David
Ritchie desired to possess, as a compensation for his exclusion
from human society.

His sister survived till the publication of the tale to which
this brief notice forms the introduction; and the author is sorry
to learn that a sort of "local sympathy," and the curiosity then
expressed concerning the Author of WAVERLEY and the subjects of
his Novels, exposed the poor woman to enquiries which gave her
pain. When pressed about her brother's peculiarities, she asked,
in her turn, why they would not permit the dead to rest? To
others, who pressed for some account of her parents, she answered
in the same tone of feeling.

The author saw this poor, and, it may be said, unhappy man, in
autumn 1797 being then, as he has the happiness still to remain,
connected by ties of intimate friendship with the family of the
venerable Dr. Adam Fergusson, the philosopher and historian, who
then resided at the mansion-house of Halyards, in the vale of
Manor, about a mile from Ritchie's hermitage, the author was upon
a visit at Halyards, which lasted for several days, and was made
acquainted with this singular anchorite, whom Dr. Fergusson
considered as an extraordinary character, and whom he assisted in
various ways, particularly by the occasional loan of books.
Though the taste of the philosopher and the poor peasant did not,
it may be supposed, always correspond, [I remember David was
particularly anxious to see a book, which he called, I think,
LETTERS TO ELECT LADIES, and which, he said, was the best
composition he had ever read; but Dr. Fergusson's library did not
supply the volume.]  Dr. Fergusson considered him as a man of a
powerful capacity and original ideas, but whose mind was thrown
off its just bias by a predominant degree of self-love and self-
opinion, galled by the sense of ridicule and contempt, and
avenging itself upon society, in idea at least, by a gloomy
misanthropy.

David Ritchie, besides the utter obscurity of his life while in
existence, had been dead for many years, when it occurred to the
author that such a character might be made a powerful agent in
fictitious narrative. He, accordingly, sketched that of Elshie
of the Mucklestane-Moor. The story was intended to be longer,
and the catastrophe more artificially brought out; but a friendly
critic, to whose opinion I subjected the work in its progress,
was of opinion, that the idea of the Solitary was of a kind too
revolting, and more likely to disgust than to interest the
reader. As I had good right to consider my adviser as an
excellent judge of public opinion, I got off my subject by
hastening the story to an end, as fast as it was possible; and,
by huddling into one volume, a tale which was designed to occupy
two, have perhaps produced a narrative as much disproportioned
and distorted, as the Black Dwarf who is its subject.

*

III. THE BLACK DWARF.

CHAPTER I.

PRELIMINARY.

Hast any philosophy in thee, Shepherd? AS YOU LIKE IT.

It was a fine April morning (excepting that it had snowed hard
the night before, and the ground remained covered with a dazzling
mantle of six inches in depth) when two horsemen rode up to the
Wallace Inn. The first was a strong, tall, powerful man, in a
grey riding-coat, having a hat covered with waxcloth, a huge
silver-mounted horsewhip, boots, and dreadnought overalls. He
was mounted on a large strong brown mare, rough in coat, but well
in condition, with a saddle of the yeomanry cut, and a double-
bitted military bridle. The man who accompanied him was
apparently his servant; he rode a shaggy little grey pony, had a
blue bonnet on his head, and a large check napkin folded about
his neck, wore a pair of long blue worsted hose instead of boots,
had his gloveless hands much stained with tar, and observed an
air of deference and respect towards his companion, but without
any of those indications of precedence and punctilio which are
preserved between the gentry and their domestics. On the
contrary, the two travellers entered the court-yard abreast, and
the concluding sentence of the conversation which had been
carrying on betwixt them was a joint ejaculation, "Lord guide us,
an this weather last, what will come o' the lambs!"  The hint was
sufficient for my Landlord, who, advancing to take the horse of
the principal person, and holding him by the reins as he
dismounted, while his ostler rendered the same service to the
attendant, welcomed the stranger to Gandercleugh, and, in the
same breath, enquired, "What news from the south hielands?"

"News?"  said the farmer, "bad eneugh news, I think;--an we can
carry through the yowes, it will be a' we can do; we maun e'en
leave the lambs to the Black Dwarfs care."

"Ay, ay," subjoined the old shepherd (for such he was), shaking
his head, "he'll be unco busy amang the morts this season."

"The Black Dwarf!"  said MY LEARNED FRIEND AND PATRON, Mr.
Jedediah Cleishbotham, "and what sort of a personage may he be?"

"Hout awa, man," answered the farmer, "ye'll hae heard o' Canny
Elshie the Black Dwarf, or I am muckle mistaen--A' the warld
tells tales about him, but it's but daft nonsense after a'--I
dinna believe a word o't frae beginning to end."

"Your father believed it unco stievely, though," said the old
man, to whom the scepticism of his master gave obvious
displeasure.

"Ay, very true, Bauldie, but that was in the time o' the
blackfaces--they believed a hantle queer things in thae days,
that naebody heeds since the lang sheep cam in."

"The mair's the pity, the mair's the pity," said the old man.
"Your father, and sae I have aften tell'd ye, maister, wad hae
been sair vexed to hae seen the auld peel-house wa's pu'd down to
make park dykes; and the bonny broomy knowe, where he liked sae
weel to sit at e'en, wi' his plaid about him, and look at the kye
as they cam down the loaning, ill wad he hae liked to hae seen
that braw sunny knowe a' riven out wi' the pleugh in the fashion
it is at this day."

"Hout, Bauldie," replied the principal, "tak ye that dram the
landlord's offering ye, and never fash your head about the
changes o' the warld, sae lang as ye're blithe and bien
yoursell."

"Wussing your health, sirs," said the shepherd; and having taken
off his glass, and observed the whisky was the right thing, he
continued, "It's no for the like o' us to be judging, to be sure;
but it was a bonny knowe that broomy knowe, and an unco braw
shelter for the lambs in a severe morning like this."

"Ay," said his patron, "but ye ken we maun hae turnips for the
lang sheep, billie, and muckle hard wark to get them, baith wi'
the pleugh and the howe; and that wad sort ill wi' sitting on the
broomy knowe, and cracking about Black Dwarfs, and siccan
clavers, as was the gate lang syne, when the short sheep were in
the fashion."

"Aweel, aweel, maister," said the attendant, "short sheep had
short rents, I'm thinking."

Here my WORTHY AND LEARNED patron again interposed, and observed,
"that he could never perceive any material difference, in point
of longitude, between one sheep and another."

This occasioned a loud hoarse laugh on the part of the farmer,
and an astonished stare on the part of the shepherd.

"It's the woo', man,--it's the woo', and no the beasts themsells,
that makes them be ca'd lang or short. I believe if ye were to
measure their backs, the short sheep wad be rather the langer-
bodied o' the twa; but it's the woo' that pays the rent in thae
days, and it had muckle need."

"Odd, Bauldie says very true,--short sheep did make short rents--
my father paid for our steading just threescore punds, and it
stands me in three hundred, plack and bawbee.--And that's very
true--I hae nae time to be standing here clavering--Landlord,
get us our breakfast, and see an' get the yauds fed--I am for
doun to Christy Wilson's, to see if him and me can gree about the
luckpenny I am to gie him for his year-aulds. We had drank sax
mutchkins to the making the bargain at St. Boswell's fair, and
some gate we canna gree upon the particulars preceesely, for as
muckle time as we took about it--I doubt we draw to a plea--But
hear ye, neighbour," addressing my WORTHY AND LEARNED patron, "if
ye want to hear onything about lang or short sheep, I will be
back here to my kail against ane o'clock; or, if ye want ony
auld-warld stories about the Black Dwarf, and sic-like, if ye'll
ware a half mutchkin upon Bauldie there, he'll crack t'ye like a
pen-gun. And I'se gie ye a mutchkin mysell, man, if I can settle
weel wi' Christy Wilson."

The farmer returned at the hour appointed, and with him came
Christy Wilson, their difference having been fortunately settled
without an appeal to the gentlemen of the long robe. My LEARNED
AND WORTHY patron failed not to attend, both on account of the
refreshment promised to the mind and to the body, ALTHOUGH HE IS
KNOWN TO PARTAKE OF THE LATTER IN A VERY MODERATE DEGREE; and the
party, with which my Landlord was associated, continued to sit
late in the evening, seasoning their liquor with many choice
tales and songs. The last incident which I recollect, was my
LEARNED AND WORTHY patron falling from his chair, just as he
concluded a long lecture upon temperance, by reciting, from the
"Gentle Shepherd," a couplet, which he RIGHT HAPPILY transferred
from the vice of avarice to that of ebriety:

He that has just eneugh may soundly sleep,
The owercome only fashes folk to keep.

In the course of the evening the Black Dwarf had not been
forgotten, and the old shepherd, Bauldie, told so many stories of
him, that they excited a good deal of interest. It also
appeared, though not till the third punch-bowl was emptied, that
much of the farmer's scepticism on the subject was affected, as
evincing a liberality of thinking, and a freedom from ancient
prejudices, becoming a man who paid three hundred pounds a-year
of rent, while, in fact, he had a lurking belief in the
traditions of his forefathers. After my usual manner, I made
farther enquiries of other persons connected with the wild and
pastoral district in which the scene of the following narrative
is placed, and I was fortunate enough to recover many links of
the story, not generally known, and which account, at least in
some degree, for the circumstances of exaggerated marvel with
which superstition has attired it in the more vulgar traditions.

[The Black Dwarf, now almost forgotten, was once held a
formidable personage by the dalesmen of the Border, where he got
the blame of whatever mischief befell the sheep or cattle. "He
was," says Dr. Leyden, who makes considerable use of him in the
ballad called the Cowt of Keeldar, "a fairy of the most malignant
order--the genuine Northern Duergar."  The best and most
authentic account of this dangerous and mysterious being occurs
in a tale communicated to the author by that eminent antiquary,
Richard Surtees, Esq. of Mainsforth, author of the HISTORY OF THE
BISHOPRIC OF DURHAM.

According to this well-attested legend, two young Northumbrians
were out on a shooting party, and had plunged deep among the
mountainous moorlands which border on Cumberland. They stopped
for refreshment in a little secluded dell by the side of a
rivulet. There, after they had partaken of such food as they
brought with them, one of the party fell asleep; the other,
unwilling to disturb his friend's repose, stole silently out of
the dell with the purpose of looking around him, when he was
astonished to find himself close to a being who seemed not to
belong to this world, as he was the most hideous dwarf that the
sun had ever shone on. His head was of full human size, forming
a frightful contrast with his height, which was considerably
under four feet. It was thatched with no other covering than
long matted red hair, like that of the felt of a badger in
consistence, and in colour a reddish brown, like the hue of the
heather-blossom. His limbs seemed of great strength; nor was he
otherwise deformed than from their undue proportion in thickness
to his diminutive height. The terrified sportsman stood gazing
on this horrible apparition, until, with an angry countenance,
the being demanded by what right he intruded himself on those
hills, and destroyed their harmless inhabitants. The perplexed
stranger endeavoured to propitiate the incensed dwarf, by
offering to surrender his game, as he would to an earthly Lord of
the Manor. The proposal only redoubled the offence already taken
by the dwarf, who alleged that he was the lord of those
mountains, and the protector of the wild creatures who found a
retreat in their solitary recesses; and that all spoils derived
from their death, or misery, were abhorrent to him. The hunter
humbled himself before the angry goblin, and by protestations of
his ignorance, and of his resolution to abstain from such
intrusion in future, at last succeeded in pacifying him. The
gnome now became more communicative, and spoke of himself as
belonging to a species of beings something between the angelic
race and humanity. He added, moreover, which could hardly have
been anticipated, that he had hopes of sharing in the redemption
of the race of Adam. He pressed the sportsman to visit his
dwelling, which he said was hard by, and plighted his faith for
his safe return. But at this moment, the shout of the
sportsman's companion was heard calling for his friend, and the
dwarf, as if unwilling that more than one person should be
cognisant of his presence, disappeared as the young man emerged
from the dell to join his comrade.

It was the universal opinion of those most experienced in such
matters, that if the shooter had accompanied the spirit, he
would, notwithstanding the dwarf's fair pretences, have been
either torn to pieces, or immured for years in the recesses of
some fairy hill.

Such is the last and most authentic account of the apparition of
the Black Dwarf.]

CHAPTER II.

Will none but Hearne the Hunter serve your turn?
                                           MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.

In one of the most remote districts of the south of Scotland,
where an ideal line, drawn along the tops of lofty and bleak
mountains, separates that land from her sister kingdom, a young
man, called Halbert, or Hobbie Elliot, a substantial farmer, who
boasted his descent from old Martin Elliot of the Preakin-tower,
noted in Border story and song, was on his return from deer-
stalking. The deer, once so numerous among these solitary
wastes, were now reduced to a very few herds, which, sheltering
themselves in the most remote and inaccessible recesses, rendered
the task of pursuing them equally toilsome and precarious. There
were, however, found many youth of the country ardently attached
to this sport, with all its dangers and fatigues. The sword had
been sheathed upon the Borders for more than a hundred years, by
the peaceful union of the crowns in the reign of James the First
of Great Britain. Still the country retained traces of what it
had been in former days; the inhabitants, their more peaceful
avocations having been repeatedly interrupted by the civil wars
of the preceding century, were scarce yet broken in to the habits
of regular industry, sheep-farming had not been introduced upon
any considerable scale, and the feeding of black cattle was the
chief purpose to which the hills and valleys were applied. Near
to the farmer's house, the tenant usually contrived to raise such
a crop of oats or barley, as afforded meal for his family; and
the whole of this slovenly and imperfect mode of cultivation left
much time upon his own hands, and those of his domestics. This
was usually employed by the young men in hunting and fishing; and
the spirit of adventure, which formerly led to raids and forays
in the same districts, was still to be discovered in the
eagerness with which they pursued those rural sports.

The more high-spirited among the youth were, about the time that
our narrative begins, expecting, rather with hope than
apprehension, an opportunity of emulating their fathers in their
military achievements, the recital of which formed the chief part
of their amusement within doors. The passing of the Scottish act
of security had given the alarm of England, as it seemed to point
at a separation of the two British kingdoms, after the decease of
Queen Anne, the reigning sovereign. Godolphin, then at the head
of the English administration, foresaw that there was no other
mode of avoiding the probable extremity of a civil war, but by
carrying through an incorporating union. How that treaty was
managed, and how little it seemed for some time to promise the
beneficial results which have since taken place to such extent,
may be learned from the history of the period. It is enough for
our purpose to say, that all Scotland was indignant at the terms
on which their legislature had surrendered their national
independence. The general resentment led to the strangest
leagues and to the wildest plans. The Cameronians were about to
take arms for the restoration of the house of Stewart, whom they
regarded, with justice, as their oppressors; and the intrigues of
the period presented the strange picture of papists, prelatists,
and presbyterians, caballing among themselves against the English
government, out of a common feeling that their country had been
treated with injustice. The fermentation was universal; and, as
the population of Scotland had been generally trained to arms,
under the act of security, they were not indifferently prepared
for war, and waited but the declaration of some of the nobility
to break out into open hostility. It was at this period of
public confusion that our story opens.

The cleugh, or wild ravine, into which Hobbie Elliot had followed
the game, was already far behind him, and he was considerably
advanced on his return homeward, when the night began to close
upon him. This would have been a circumstance of great
indifference to the experienced sportsman, who could have walked
blindfold over every inch of his native heaths, had it not
happened near a spot, which, according to the traditions of the
country, was in extremely bad fame, as haunted by supernatural
appearances. To tales of this kind Hobbie had, from his
childhood, lent an attentive ear; and as no part of the country
afforded such a variety of legends, so no man was more deeply
read in their fearful lore than Hobbie of the Heugh-foot; for so
our gallant was called, to distinguish him from a round dozen of
Elliots who bore the same Christian name. It cost him no
efforts, therefore, to call to memory the terrific incidents
connected with the extensive waste upon which he was now
entering. In fact, they presented themselves with a readiness
which he felt to be somewhat dismaying.

This dreary common was called Mucklestane-Moor, from a huge
column of unhewn granite, which raised its massy head on a knell
near the centre of the heath, perhaps to tell of the mighty dead
who slept beneath, or to preserve the memory of some bloody
skirmish. The real cause of its existence had, however, passed
away; and tradition, which is as frequently an inventor of
fiction as a preserver of truth, had supplied its place with a
supplementary legend of her own, which now came full upon
Hobbie's memory. The ground about the pillar was strewed, or
rather encumbered, with many large fragments of stone of the same
consistence with the column, which, from their appearance as they
lay scattered on the waste, were popularly called the Grey Geese
of Mucklestane-Moor. The legend accounted for this name and
appearance by the catastrophe of a noted and most formidable
witch who frequented these hills in former days, causing the ewes
to KEB, and the kine to cast their calves, and performing all the
feats of mischief ascribed to these evil beings. On this moor
she used to hold her revels with her sister hags; and rings were
still pointed out on which no grass nor heath ever grew, the turf
being, as it were, calcined by the scorching hoofs of their
diabolical partners.

Once upon a time this old hag is said to have crossed the moor,
driving before her a flock of geese, which she proposed to sell
to advantage at a neighbouring fair;--for it is well known that
the fiend, however liberal in imparting his powers of doing
mischief, ungenerously leaves his allies under the necessity of
performing the meanest rustic labours for subsistence. The day
was far advanced, and her chance of obtaining a good price
depended on her being first at the market. But the geese, which
had hitherto preceded her in a pretty orderly manner, when they
came to this wide common, interspersed with marshes and pools of
water, scattered in every direction, to plunge into the element
in which they delighted. Incensed at the obstinacy with which
they defied all her efforts to collect them, and not remembering
the precise terms of the contract by which the fiend was bound to
obey her commands for a certain space, the sorceress exclaimed,
"Deevil, that neither I nor they ever stir from this spot more!"
The words were hardly uttered, when, by a metamorphosis as sudden
as any in Ovid, the hag and her refractory flock were converted
into stone, the angel whom she served, being a strict formalist,
grasping eagerly at an opportunity of completing the ruin of her
body and soul by a literal obedience to her orders. It is said,
that when she perceived and felt the transformation which was
about to take place, she exclaimed to the treacherous fiend, "Ah,
thou false thief! lang hast thou promised me a grey gown, and
now I am getting ane that will last for ever."  The dimensions of
the pillar, and of the stones, were often appealed to, as a proof
of the superior stature and size of old women and geese in the
days of other years, by those praisers of the past who held the
comfortable opinion of the gradual degeneracy of mankind.

All particulars of this legend Hobbie called to mind as he passed
along the moor. He also remembered, that, since the catastrophe
had taken place, the scene of it had been avoided, at least after
night-fall, by all human beings, as being the ordinary resort of
kelpies, spunkies, and other demons, once the companions of the
witch's diabolical revels, and now continuing to rendezvous upon
the same spot, as if still in attendance on their transformed
mistress. Hobbie's natural hardihood, however, manfully combated
with these intrusive sensations of awe. He summoned to his side
the brace of large greyhounds, who were the companions of his
sports, and who were wont, in his own phrase, to fear neither dog
nor devil; he looked at the priming of his piece, and, like the
clown in Hallowe'en, whistled up the warlike ditty of Jock of the
Side, as a general causes his drums be beat to inspirit the
doubtful courage of his soldiers.

In this state of mind, he was very glad to hear a friendly voice
shout in his rear, and propose to him a partner on the road. He
slackened his pace, and was quickly joined by a youth well known
to him, a gentleman of some fortune in that remote country, and
who had been abroad on the same errand with himself. Young
Earnscliff, "of that ilk," had lately come of age, and succeeded
to a moderate fortune, a good deal dilapidated, from the share
his family had taken in the disturbances of the period. They
were much and generally respected in the country; a reputation
which this young gentleman seemed likely to sustain, as he was
well educated, and of excellent dispositions.

"Now, Earnscliff;" exclaimed Hobbie, "I am glad to meet your
honour ony gate, and company's blithe on a bare moor like this
--it's an unco bogilly bit--Where hae ye been sporting?"

"Up the Carla Cleugh, Hobbie," answered Earnscliff, returning his
greeting. "But will our dogs keep the peace, think you?"

"Deil a fear o' mine," said Hobbie, "they hae scarce a leg to
stand on.--Odd! the deer's fled the country, I think! I have
been as far as Inger-fell-foot, and deil a horn has Hobbie seen,
excepting three red-wud raes, that never let me within shot of
them, though I gaed a mile round to get up the wind to them, an'
a'. Deil o' me wad care muckle, only I wanted some venison to
our auld gude-dame. The carline, she sits in the neuk yonder,
upbye, and cracks about the grand shooters and hunters lang syne
--Odd, I think they hae killed a' the deer in the country, for my
part."

"Well, Hobbie, I have shot a fat buck, and sent him to Earnscliff
this morning--you shall have half of him for your grandmother."

"Mony thanks to ye, Mr. Patrick, ye're kend to a' the country for
a kind heart. It will do the auld wife's heart gude--mair by
token, when she kens it comes frae you--and maist of a' gin ye'll
come up and take your share, for I reckon ye are lonesome now in
the auld tower, and a' your folk at that weary Edinburgh. I
wonder what they can find to do amang a wheen ranks o' stane-
houses wi' slate on the tap o' them, that might live on their ain
bonny green hills."

"My education and my sisters' has kept my mother much in
Edinburgh for several years," said Earnscliff; "but I promise you
I propose to make up for lost time."

"And ye'll rig out the auld tower a bit," said Hobbie, "and live
hearty and neighbour-like wi' the auld family friends, as the
Laird o' Earnscliff should? I can tell ye, my mother--my
grandmother I mean--but, since we lost our ain mother, we ca' her
sometimes the tane, and sometimes the tother--but, ony gate, she
conceits hersell no that distant connected wi' you."

"Very true, Hobbie, and I will come to the Heugh-foot to dinner
to-morrow with all my heart."

"Weel, that's kindly said! We are auld neighbours, an we were
nae kin--and my gude-dame's fain to see you--she clavers about
your father that was killed lang syne."

"Hush, hush, Hobbie--not a word about that--it's a story better
forgotten."

"I dinna ken--if it had chanced amang our folk, we wad hae keepit
it in mind mony a day till we got some mends for't--but ye ken
your ain ways best, you lairds--I have heard say that Ellieslaw's
friend stickit your sire after the laird himsell had mastered his
sword."

"Fie, fie, Hobbie; it was a foolish brawl, occasioned by wine and
politics--many swords were drawn--it is impossible to say who
struck the blow."

"At ony rate, auld Ellieslaw was aiding and abetting; and I am
sure if ye were sae disposed as to take amends on him, naebody
could say it was wrang, for your father's blood is beneath his
nails--and besides there's naebody else left that was concerned
to take amends upon, and he's a prelatist and a jacobite into the
bargain--I can tell ye the country folk look for something atween
ye."

"O for shame, Hobbie!"  replied the young Laird; "you, that
profess religion, to stir your friend up to break the law, and
take vengeance at his own hand, and in such a bogilly bit too,
where we know not what beings may be listening to us!"

"Hush, hush!"  said Hobbie, drawing nearer to his companion, "I
was nae thinking o' the like o' them--But I can guess a wee bit
what keeps your hand up, Mr. Patrick; we a' ken it's no lack o'
courage, but the twa grey een of a bonny lass, Miss Isabel Vere,
that keeps you sae sober."

"I assure you, Hobbie," said his companion, rather angrily, "I
assure you you are mistaken; and it is extremely wrong of you,
either to think of, or to utter, such an idea; I have no idea of
permitting freedoms to be carried so far as to connect my name
with that of any young lady."

"Why, there now--there now!"  retorted Elliot; "did I not say it
was nae want o' spunk that made ye sae mim?--Weel, weel, I meant
nae offence; but there's just ae thing ye may notice frae a
friend. The auld Laird of Ellieslaw has the auld riding blood
far hetter at his heart than ye hae--troth, he kens naething
about thae newfangled notions o' peace and quietness--he's a' for
the auld-warld doings o' lifting and laying on, and he has a
wheen stout lads at his back too, and keeps them weel up in
heart, and as fu' o' mischief as young colts. Where he gets the
gear to do't nane can say; he lives high, and far abune his rents
here; however, he pays his way--Sae, if there's ony out-break in
the country, he's likely to break out wi' the first--and weel
does he mind the auld quarrels between ye, I'm surmizing he'll be
for a touch at the auld tower at Earnscliff."

"Well, Hobbie," answered the young gentleman, "if he should be so
ill advised, I shall try to make the old tower good against him,
as it has been made good by my betters against his betters many a
day ago."

"Very right--very right--that's speaking like a man now," said
the stout yeoman; "and, if sae should be that this be sae, if
ye'll just gar your servant jow out the great bell in the tower,
there's me, and my twa brothers, and little Davie of the
Stenhouse, will be wi' you, wi' a' the power we can make, in the
snapping of a flint."

"Many thanks, Hobbie," answered Earnscliff; "but I hope we shall
have no war of so unnatural and unchristian a kind in our time."

"Hout, sir, hout," replied Elliot; "it wad be but a wee bit
neighbour war, and Heaven and earth would make allowances for it
in this uncuItivated place--it's just the nature o' the folk and
the land--we canna live quiet like Loudon folk--we haena sae
muckle to do. It's impossible."

"Well, Hobbie," said the Laird, "for one who believes so deeply
as you do in supernatural appearances, I must own you take Heaven
in your own hand rather audaciously, considering where we are
walking."

"What needs I care for the Mucklestane-Moor ony mair than ye do
yoursell, Earnscliff?"  said Hobbie, something offended; "to be
sure, they do say there's a sort o' worricows and lang-nebbit
things about the land, but what need I care for them? I hae a
good conscience, and little to answer for, unless it be about a
rant amang the lasses, or a splore at a fair, and that's no
muckle to speak of. Though I say it mysell, I am as quiet a lad
and as peaceable--"

"And Dick Turnbull's head that you broke, and Willie of Winton
whom you shot at?"  said his travelling companion.

"Hout, Earnscliff, ye keep a record of a' men's misdoings
--Dick's head's healed again, and we're to fight out the quarrel
at Jeddart, on the Rood-day, so that's like a thing settled in a
peaceable way; and then I am friends wi' Willie again, puir
chield--it was but twa or three hail draps after a'. I wad let
onybody do the like o't to me for a pint o' brandy. But Willie's
lowland bred, poor fallow, and soon frighted for himsell--And,
for the worricows, were we to meet ane on this very bit--"

"As is not unlikely," said young Earnscliff, "for there stands
your old witch, Hobbie."

"I say," continued Elliot, as if indignant at this hint--"I say,
if the auld carline hersell was to get up out o' the grund just
before us here, I would think nae mair--But, gude preserve us,
Earnscliff; what can yon, be!"

CHAPTER III.

Brown Dwarf, that o'er the moorland strays,
Thy name to Keeldar tell!
"The Brown Man of the Moor, that stays
Beneath the heather-bell."             JOHN LEYDEN

The object which alarmed the young farmer in the middle of his
valorous protestations, startled for a moment even his less
prejudiced companion. The moon, which had arisen during their
conversation, was, in the phrase of that country, wading or
struggling with clouds, and shed only a doubtful and occasional
light. By one of her beams, which streamed upon the great
granite column to which they now approached, they discovered a
form, apparently human, but of a size much less than ordinary,
which moved slowly among the large grey stones, not like a person
intending to journey onward, but with the slow, irregular,
flitting movement of a being who hovers around some spot of
melancholy recollection, uttering also, from time to time, a sort
of indistinct muttering sound. This so much resembled his idea
of the motions of an apparition, that Hobbie Elliot, making a
dead pause, while his hair erected itself upon his scalp,
whispered to his companion, "It's Auld Ailie hersell! Shall I
gie her a shot, in the name of God?"

"For Heaven's sake, no," said his companion, holding down the
weapon which he was about to raise to the aim--"for Heaven's
sake, no; it's some poor distracted creature."

"Ye're distracted yoursell, for thinking of going so near to
her," said Elliot, holding his companion in his turn, as he
prepared to advance. "We'll aye hae time to pit ower a bit
prayer (an I could but mind ane) afore she comes this length
--God! she's in nae hurry," continued he, growing bolder from
his companion's confidence, and the little notice the apparition
seemed to take of them. "She hirples like a hen on a het girdle.
I redd ye, Earnscliff" (this he added in a gentle whisper), "let
us take a cast about, as if to draw the wind on a buck--the bog
is no abune knee-deep, and better a saft road as bad company."
[The Scots use the epithet soft, IN MALAM PARTEM, in two cases,
at least. A SOFT road is a road through quagmire and bogs; and
SOFT weather signifies that which is very rainy.]

Earnscliff, however, in spite of his companion's resistance and
remonstrances, continued to advance on the path they had
originally pursued, and soon confronted the object of their
investigation.

The height of the figure, which appeared even to decrease as they
approached it, seemed to be under four feet, and its form, as far
as the imperfect light afforded them the means of discerning, was
very nearly as broad as long, or rather of a spherical shape,
which could only be occasioned by some strange personal
deformity. The young sportsman hailed this extraordinary
appearance twice, without receiving any answer, or attending to
the pinches by which his companion endeavoured to intimate that
their best course was to walk on, without giving farther
disturbance to a being of such singular and preternatural
exterior. To the third repeated demand of "Who are you? What do
you here at this hour of night?"--a voice replied, whose shrill,
uncouth, and dissonant tones made Elliot step two paces back, and
startled even his companion, "Pass on your way, and ask nought at
them that ask nought at you."

"What do you do here so far from shelter? Are you benighted on
your journey? Will you follow us home ('God forbid!' ejaculated
Hobbie Elliot, involuntarily), and I will give you a lodging?"

"I would sooner lodge by mysell in the deepest of the Tarras-
flow," again whispered Hobbie.

"Pass on your way," rejoined the figure, the harsh tones of his
voice still more exalted by passion. "I want not your guidance
--I want not your lodging--it is five years since my head was
under a human roof, and I trust it was for the last time."

"He is mad," said Earnscliff.

"He has a look of auld Humphrey Ettercap, the tinkler, that
perished in this very moss about five years syne," answered his
superstitious companion; "but Humphrey wasna that awfu' big in
the bouk."

"Pass on your way," reiterated the object of their curiosity,
"the breath of your human bodies poisons the air around me--the
sound of pour human voices goes through my ears like sharp
bodkins"

"Lord safe us!"  whispered Hobbie, "that the dead should bear sie
fearfu' ill-will to the living!--his saul maun be in a puir way,
I'm jealous."

"Come, my friend," said Earnscliff, "you seem to suffer under
some strong affliction; common humanity will not allow us to
leave you here."

"Common humanity!"  exclaimed the being, with a scornful laugh
that sounded like a shriek, "where got ye that catch-word--that
noose for woodcocks--that common disguise for man-traps--that
bait which the wretched idiot who swallows, will soon find covers
a hook with barbs ten times sharper than those you lay for the
animals which you murder for your luxury!"

"I tell you, my friend," again replied Earnscliff, "you are
incapable of judging of your own situation--you will perish in
this wilderness, and we must, in compassion, force you along with
us."

"I'll hae neither hand nor foot in't," said Hobbie; "let the
ghaist take his ain way, for God's sake!"

"My blood be on my own head, if I perish here," said the figure;
and, observing Earnscliff meditating to lay hold on him, he
added, "And your blood be upon yours, if you touch but the skirt
of my garments, to infect me with the taint of mortality!"

The moon shone more brightly as he spoke thus, and Earnscliff
observed that he held out his right hand armed with some weapon
of offence, which glittered in the cold ray like the blade of a
long knife, or the barrel of a pistol. It would have been
madness to persevere in his attempt upon a being thus armed, and
holding such desperate language, especially as it was plain he
would have little aid from his companion, who had fairly left him
to settle matters with the apparition as he could, and had
proceeded a few paces on his way homeward. Earnscliff, however,
turned and followed Hobbie, after looking back towards the
supposed maniac, who, as if raised to frenzy by the interview,
roamed wildly around the great stone, exhausting his voice in
shrieks and imprecations, that thrilled wildly along the waste
heath.

The two sportsmen moved on some time in silence, until they were
out of hearing of these uncouth sounds, which was not ere they
had gained a considerable distance from the pillar that gave name
to the moor. Each made his private comments on the scene they
had witnessed, until Hobbie Elliot suddenly exclaimed, "Weel,
I'll uphaud that yon ghaist, if it be a ghaist, has baith done
and suffered muckle evil in the flesh, that gars him rampauge in
that way after he is dead and gane."

"It seems to me the very madness of misanthropy," said
Earnscliff; following his own current of thought.

"And ye didna think it was a spiritual creature, then?" asked
Hobbie at his companion.

"Who, I?--No, surely."

"Weel, I am partly of the mind mysell that it may be a live
thing--and yet I dinna ken, I wadna wish to see ony thing look
liker a bogle."

"At any rate," said Earnscliff, "I will ride over to-morrow and
see what has become of the unhappy being."

"In fair daylight?"  queried the yeoman; "then, grace o' God,
I'se be wi' ye. But here we are nearer to Heugh-foot than to
your house by twa mile,--hadna ye better e'en gae hame wi' me,
and we'll send the callant on the powny to tell them that you are
wi' us, though I believe there's naebody at hame to wait for you
but the servants and the cat."

"Have with you then, friend Hobbie," said the young hunter; "and
as I would not willingly have either the servants be anxious, or
puss forfeit her supper, in my absence, I'll be obliged to you to
send the boy as you propose."

"Aweel, that IS kind, I must say. And ye'll gae hame to Heugh-
foot? They'll be right blithe to see you, that will they."

This affair settled, they walked briskly on a little farther,
when, coming to the ridge of a pretty steep hill, Hobbie Elliot
exclaimed, "Now, Earnscliff, I am aye glad when I come to this
very bit--Ye see the light below, that's in the ha' window, where
grannie, the gash auld carline, is sitting birling at her wheel
--and ye see yon other light that's gaun whiddin' back and forrit
through amang the windows? that's my cousin, Grace Armstrong,
--she's twice as clever about the house as my sisters, and sae
they say themsells, for they're good-natured lasses as ever trode
on heather; but they confess themsells, and sae does grannie,
that she has far maist action, and is the best goer about the
toun, now that grannie is off the foot hersell.--My brothers, ane
o' them's away to wait upon the chamberlain, and ane's at Moss-
phadraig, that's our led farm--he can see after the stock just as
weel as I can do."

"You are lucky, my good friend, in having so many valuable
relations."

"Troth am I--Grace make me thankful, I'se never deny it.--But
will ye tell me now, Earnscliff, you that have been at college,
and the high-school of Edinburgh, and got a' sort o' lair where
it was to be best gotten--will ye tell me--no that it's ony
concern of mine in particular,--but I heard the priest of St.
John's, and our minister, bargaining about it at the Winter fair,
and troth they baith spak very weel--Now, the priest says it's
unlawful to marry ane's cousin; but I cannot say I thought he
brought out the Gospel authorities half sae weel as our minister-
-our minister is thought the best divine and the best preacher
atween this and Edinburgh--Dinna ye think he was likely to be
right?"

"Certainly marriage, by all protestant Christians, is held to be
as free as God made it by the Levitical law; so, Hobbie, there
can be no bar, legal or religious, betwixt you and Miss
Armstrong."

"Hout awa' wi' your joking, Earnscliff," replied his companion,
--" ye are angry aneugh yoursell if ane touches you a bit, man,
on the sooth side of the jest--No that I was asking the question
about Grace, for ye maun ken she's no my cousin-germain out and
out, but the daughter of my uncle;s wife by her first marriage,
so she's nae kith nor kin to me--only a connexion like. But now
we're at the Sheeling-hill--I'll fire off my gun, to let them ken
I'm coming, that's aye my way; and if I hae a deer I gie them twa
shots, ane for the deer and ane for mysell."

He fired off his piece accordingly, and the number of lights were
seen to traverse the house, and even to gleam before it. Hobbie
Elliot pointed out one of these to Earnscliff, which seemed to
glide from the house towards some of the outhouses-"That's Grace
hersell," said Hobbie. "She'll no meet me at the door, I'se
warrant her--but she'll be awa', for a' that, to see if my
hounds' supper be ready, poor beasts."

"Love me, love my dog," answered Earnscliff. "Ah, Hobbie, you
are a lucky young fellow!"

This observation was uttered with something like a sigh, which
apparently did not escape the ear of his companion.

"Hout, other folk may be as lucky as I am--O how I have seen Miss
Isabel Vere's head turn after somebody when they passed ane
another at the Carlisle races! Wha kens but things may come
round in this world?"

Earnscliff muttered something like an answer; but whether in
assent of the proposition, or rebuking the application of it,
could not easily be discovered; and it seems probable that the
speaker himself was willing his meaning should rest in doubt and
obscurity. They had now descended the broad loaning, which,
winding round the foot of the steep bank, or heugh, brought them
in front of the thatched, but comfortable, farm-house, which was
the dwelling of Hobbie Elliot and his family.

The doorway was thronged with joyful faces; but the appearance of
a stranger blunted many a gibe which had been prepared on
Hobbie's lack of success in the deer-stalking. There was a
little bustle among three handsome young women, each endeavouring
to devolve upon another the task of ushering the stranger into
the apartment, while probably all were anxious to escape for the
purpose of making some little personal arrangements, before
presenting themselves to a young gentleman in a dishabille only
intended for their brother.

Hobbie, in the meanwhile, bestowing some hearty and general abuse
upon them all (for Grace was not of the party), snatched the
candle from the hand of one of the rustic coquettes, as she stood
playing pretty with it in her hand, and ushered his guest into
the family parlour, or rather hall; for the place having been a
house of defence in former times, the sitting apartment was a
vaulted and paved room, damp and dismal enough compared with the
lodgings of the yeomanry of our days, but which, when well
lighted up with a large sparkling fire of turf and bog-wood,
seemed to Earnscliff a most comfortable exchange for the darkness
and bleak blast of the hill. Kindly and repeatedly was he
welcomed by the venerable old dame, the mistress of the family,
who, dressed in her coif and pinners, her close and decent gown
of homespun wool, but with a large gold necklace and ear-rings,
looked, what she really was, the lady as well as the farmer's
wife, while, seated in her chair of wicker, by the corner of the
great chimney, she directed the evening occupations of the young
women, and of two or three stout serving wenches, who sate plying
their distaffs behind the backs of their young mistresses.

As soon as Earnscliff had been duly welcomed, and hasty orders
issued for some addition to the evening meal, his grand-dame and
sisters opened their battery upon Hobbie Elliot for his lack of
success against the deer.

"Jenny needna have kept up her kitchen-fire for a' that Hobbie
has brought hame," said one sister.

"Troth no, lass," said another; "the gathering peat, if it was
weel blawn, wad dress a' our Hobbie's venison." [The gathering
peat is the piece of turf left to treasure up the secret seeds of
fire, without any generous consumption of fuel; in a word, to
keep the fire alive.]

"Ay, or the low of the candle, if the wind wad let it hide
steady," said a third; "if I were him, I would bring hame a black
craw, rather than come back three times without a buck's horn to
blaw on."

Hobbie turned from the one to the other, regarding them
alternately with a frown on his brow, the augury of which was
confuted by the good-humoured laugh on the lower part of his
countenance. He then strove to propitiate them, by mentioning
the intended present of his companion.

"In my young days," said the old lady, "a man wad hae been
ashamed to come back frae the hill without a buck hanging on each
side o' his horse, like a cadger carrying calves."

"I wish they had left some for us then, grannie," retorted
Hobbie; "they've cleared the country o' them, thae auld friends
o' yours, I'm thinking."

"We see other folk can find game, though you cannot, Hobbie,"
said the eldest sister, glancing a look at young Earnscliff.

"Weel, weel, woman, hasna every dog his day, begging Earnscliff's
pardon for the auld saying--Mayna I hae his luck, and he mine,
another time?--It's a braw thing for a man to be out a' day, and
frighted--na, I winna say that neither but mistrysted wi' bogles
in the hame-coming, an' then to hae to flyte wi' a wheen women
that hae been doing naething a' the live-lang day, but whirling a
bit stick, wi' a thread trailing at it, or boring at a clout."

"Frighted wi' bogles!"  exclaimed the females, one and all,--for
great was the regard then paid, and perhaps still paid, in these
glens, to all such fantasies.

"I did not say frighted, now--I only said mis-set wi' the thing
--And there was but ae bogle, neither--Earnscliff, ye saw it; as
weel as I did?"

And he proceeded, without very much exaggeration, to detail, in
his own way, the meeting they had with the mysterious being at
Mucklestane-Moor, concluding, he could not conjecture what on
earth it could be, unless it was either the Enemy himsell, or
some of the auld Peghts that held the country lang syne.

"Auld Peght!"  exclaimed the grand-dame; "na, na--bless thee frae
scathe, my bairn, it's been nae Peght that--it's been the Brown
Man of the Moors! O weary fa' thae evil days!--what can evil
beings be coming for to distract a poor country, now it's
peacefully settled, and living in love and law--O weary on him!
he ne'er brought gude to these lands or the indwellers. My
father aften tauld me he was seen in the year o' the bloody fight
at Marston-Moor, and then again in Montrose's troubles, and again
before the rout o' Dunbar, and, in my ain time, he was seen about
the time o' Bothwell-Brigg, and they said the second-sighted
Laird of Benarbuck had a communing wi' him some time afore
Argyle's landing, but that I cannot speak to sae preceesely--it
was far in the west.--O, bairns, he's never permitted but in an
ill time, sae mind ilka ane o' ye to draw to Him that can help in
the day of trouble."

Earnscliff now interposed, and expressed his firm conviction that
the person they had seen was some poor maniac, and had no
commission from the invisible world to announce either war or
evil. But his opinion found a very cold audience, and all joined
to deprecate his purpose of returning to the spot the next day.

"O, my bonny bairn," said the old dame (for, in the kindness of
her heart, she extended her parental style to all in whom she was
interested)---"You should beware mair than other folk--there's
been a heavy breach made in your house wi' your father's
bloodshed, and wi' law-pleas, and losses sinsyne;--and you are
the flower of the flock, and the lad that will build up the auld
bigging again (if it be His will) to be an honour to the country,
and a safeguard to those that dwell in it--you, before others,
are called upon to put yoursell in no rash adventures--for yours
was aye ower venturesome a race, and muckle harm they have got by
it."

"But I am sure, my good friend, you would not have me be afraid
of going to an open moor in broad daylight?"

"I dinna ken," said the good old dame; "I wad never bid son or
friend o' mine haud their hand back in a gude cause, whether it
were a friend's or their ain--that should be by nae bidding of
mine, or of ony body that's come of a gentle kindred--But it
winna gang out of a grey head like mine, that to gang to seek for
evil that's no fashing wi' you, is clean against law and
Scripture."

Earnscliff resigned an argument which he saw no prospect of
maintaining with good effect, and the entrance of supper broke
off the conversation. Miss Grace had by this time made her
appearance, and Hobbie, not without a conscious glance at
Earnscliff, placed himself by her side. Mirth and lively
conversation, in which the old lady of the house took the good-
humoured share which so well becomes old age, restored to the
cheeks of the damsels the roses which their brother's tale of the
apparition had chased away, and they danced and sung for an hour
after supper as if there were no such things as goblins in the
world.

CHAPTER IV.

I am Misanthropos, and hate mankind;
For thy part, I do wish thou wert a dog,
That I might love thee something.       TIMON OF ATHENS

On the following morning, after breakfast, Earnscliff took leave
of his hospitable friends, promising to return in time to partake
of the venison, which had arrived from his house. Hobbie, who
apparently took leave of him at the door of his habitation, slunk
out, however, and joined him at the top of the hill.

"Ye'll be gaun yonder, Mr. Patrick; feind o' me will mistryst you
for a' my mother says. I thought it best to slip out quietly
though, in case she should mislippen something of what we're gaun
to do--we maunna vex her at nae rate--it was amaist the last word
my father said to me on his deathbed."

"By no means, Hobbie," said Earnscliff; "she well merits all your
attention."

"Troth, for that matter, she would be as sair vexed amaist for
you as for me. But d'ye really think there's nae presumption in
venturing back yonder?--We hae nae special commission, ye ken."

"If I thought as you do, Hobbie," said the young gentleman, "I
would not perhaps enquire farther into this business; but as I am
of opinion that preternatural visitations are either ceased
altogether, or become very rare in our days, I am unwilling to
leave a matter uninvestigated which may concern the life of a
poor distracted being."

"Aweel, aweel, if ye really think that," answered Hobbie
doubtfully--"And it's for certain the very fairies--I mean the
very good neighbours themsells (for they say folk suldna ca' them
fairies) that used to be seen on every green knowe at e'en, are
no half sae often visible in our days. I canna depone to having
ever seen ane mysell, but, I ance heard ane whistle ahint me in
the moss, as like a whaup [Curlew] as ae thing could be like
anither. And mony ane my father saw when he used to come hame
frae the fairs at e'en, wi' a drap drink in his head, honest
man."

Earnscliff was somewhat entertained with the gradual declension
of superstition from one generation to another which was inferred
In this last observation; and they continued to reason on such
subjects, until they came in sight of the upright stone which
gave name to the moor.

"As I shall answer," says Hobbie, "yonder's the creature creeping
about yet!--But it's daylight, and you have your gun, and I
brought out my bit whinger--I think we may venture on him."

"By all manner of means," said Earnscliff; "but, in the name of
wonder, what can he be doing there?"

"Biggin a dry-stane dyke, I think, wi' the grey geese, as they
ca' thae great loose stanes--Odd, that passes a' thing I e'er
heard tell of!"

As they approached nearer, Earnscliff could not help agreeing
with his companion. The figure they had seen the night before
seemed slowly and toilsomely labouring to pile the large stones
one upon another, as if to form a small enclosure. Materials lay
around him in great plenty, but the labour of carrying on the
work was immense, from the size of most of the stones; and it
seemed astonishing that he should have succeeded in moving
several which he had already arranged for the foundation of his
edifice. He was struggling to move a fragment of great size when
the two young men came up, and was so intent upon executing his
purpose, that he did not perceive them till they were close upon
him. In straining and heaving at the stone, in order to place it
according to his wish, he displayed a degree of strength which
seemed utterly inconsistent with his size and apparent deformity.
Indeed, to judge from the difficulties he had already surmounted,
he must have been of Herculean powers; for some of the stones he
had succeeded in raising apparently required two men's strength
to have moved them. Hobbie's suspicions began to revive, on
seeing the preternatural strength he exerted.

"I am amaist persuaded it's the ghaist of a stane-mason--see
siccan band-statnes as he's laid i--An it be a man, after a', I
wonder what he wad take by the rood to build a march dyke.
There's ane sair wanted between Cringlehope and the Shaws.--
Honest man" (raising his voice), "ye make good firm wark there?"

The being whom he addressed raised his eyes with a ghastly stare,
and, getting up from his stooping posture, stood before them in
all his native and hideous deformity. His head was of uncommon
size, covered with a fell of shaggy hair, partly grizzled with
age; his eyebrows, shaggy and prominent, overhung a pair of small
dark, piercing eyes, set far back in their sockets, that rolled
with a portentous wildness, indicative of a partial insanity.
The rest of his features were of the coarse, rough-hewn stamp,
with which a painter would equip a giant in romance; to which was
added the wild, irregular, and peculiar expression, so often seen
in the countenances of those whose persons are deformed. His
body, thick and square, like that of a man of middle size, was
mounted upon two large feet; but nature seemed to have forgotten
the legs and the thighs, or they were so very short as to be
hidden by the dress which he wore. His arms were long and
brawny, furnished with two muscular hands, and, where uncovered
in the eagerness of his labour, were shagged with coarse black
hair. It seemed as if nature had originally intended the
separate parts of his body to be the members of a giant, but had
afterwards capriciously assigned them to the person of a dwarf,
so ill did the length of his arms and the iron strength of his
frame correspond with the shortness of his stature. His clothing
was a sort of coarse brown tunic, like a monk's frock, girt round
him with a belt of seal-skin. On his head he had a cap made of
badger's skin, or some other rough fur, which added considerably
to the grotesque effect of his whole appearance, and overshadowed
features, whose habitual expression seemed that of sullen
malignant misanthropy.

This remarkable Dwarf gazed on the two youths in silence, with a
dogged and irritated look, until Earnscliff, willing to soothe
him into better temper, observed, "You are hard tasked, my
friend; allow us to assist you."

Elliot and he accordingly placed the stone, by their joint
efforts, upon the rising wall. The Dwarf watched them with the
eye of a taskmaster, and testified, by peevish gestures, his
impatience at the time which they took in adjusting the stone.
He pointed to another--they raised it also--to a third, to a
fourth--they continued to humour him, though with some trouble,
for he assigned them, as if intentionally, the heaviest fragments
which lay near.

"And now, friend," said Elliot, as the unreasonable Dwarf
indicated another stone larger than any they had moved,
"Earnscliff may do as he likes; but be ye man or be ye waur, deil
be in my fingers if I break my back wi' heaving thae stanes ony
langer like a barrow-man, without getting sae muckle as thanks
for my pains."

"Thanks!"  exclaimed the Dwarf, with a motion expressive of the
utmost contempt--"There--take them, and fatten upon them! Take
them, and may they thrive with you as they have done with me--as
they have done with every mortal worm that ever heard the word
spoken by his fellow reptile! Hence--either labour or begone!"

"This is a fine reward we have, Earnscliff, for building a
tabernacle for the devil, and prejudicing our ain souls into the
bargain, for what we ken."

"Our presence," answered Earnscliff, "seems only to irritate his
frenzy; we had better leave him, and send some one to provide him
with food and necessaries."

They did so. The servant dispatched for this purpose found the
Dwarf still labouring at his wall, but could not extract a word
from him. The lad, infected with the superstitions of the
country, did not long persist in an attempt to intrude questions
or advice on so singular a figure, but having placed the articles
which he had brought for his use on a stone at some distance, he
left them at the misanthrope's disposal.

The Dwarf proceeded in his labours, day after day, with an
assiduity so incredible as to appear almost supernatural. In one
day he often seemed to have done the work of two men, and his
building soon assumed the appearance of the walls of a hut,
which, though very small, and constructed only of stones and
turf, without any mortar, exhibited, from the unusual size of the
stones employed, an appearance of solidity very uncommon for a
cottage of such narrow dimensions and rude construction.
Earnscliff; attentive to his motions, no sooner perceived to what
they tended, than he sent down a number of spars of wood suitable
for forming the roof, which he caused to be left in the
neighbourhood of the spot, resolving next day to send workmen to
put them up. But his purpose was anticipated, for in the
evening, during the night, and early in the morning, the Dwarf
had laboured so hard, and with such ingenuity, that he had nearly
completed the adjustment of the rafters. His next labour was to
cut rushes and thatch his dwelling, a task which he performed
with singular dexterity.

As he seemed averse to receive any aid beyond the occasional
assistance of a passenger, materials suitable to his purpose, and
tools, were supplied to him, in the use of which he proved to be
skilful. He constructed the door and window of his cot, he
adjusted a rude bedstead, and a few shelves, and appeared to
become somewhat soothed in his temper as his accommodations
increased.

His next task was to form a strong enclosure, and to cultivate
the land within it to the best of his power; until, by
transporting mould, and working up what was upon the spot, he
formed a patch of garden-ground. It must be naturally supposed,
that, as above hinted, this solitary being received assistance
occasionally from such travellers as crossed the moor by chance,
as well as from several who went from curiosity to visit his
works. It was, indeed, impossible to see a human creature, so
unfitted, at first sight, for hard labour, toiling with such
unremitting assiduity, without stopping a few minutes to aid him
in his task; and, as no one of his occasional assistants was
acquainted with the degree of help which the Dwarf had received
from others, the celerity of his progress lost none of its
marvels in their eyes. The strong and compact appearance of the
cottage, formed in so very short a space, and by such a being,
and the superior skill which he displayed in mechanics, and in
other arts, gave suspicion to the surrounding neighbours. They
insisted, that, if he was not a phantom,--an opinion which was
now abandoned, since he plainly appeared a being of blood and
bone with themselves,--yet he must be in close league with the
invisible world, and have chosen that sequestered spot to carry
on his communication with them undisturbed. They insisted,
though in a different sense from the philosopher's application of
the phrase, that he was never less alone than when alone; and
that from the heights which commanded the moor at a distance,
passengers often discovered a person at work along with this
dweller of the desert, who regularly disappeared as soon as they
approached closer to the cottage. Such a figure was also
occasionally seen sitting beside him at the door, walking with
him in the moor, or assisting him in fetching water from his
fountain. Earnscliff explained this phenomenon by supposing it
to be the Dwarf's shadow.

"Deil a shadow has he," replied Hobbie Elliot, who was a
strenuous defender of the general opinion; "he's ower far in wi'
the Auld Ane to have a shadow. Besides," he argued more
logically, "wha ever heard of a shadow that cam between a body
and the sun? and this thing, be it what it will, is thinner
and taller than the body himsell, and has been seen to come
between him and the sun mair than anes or twice either."

These suspicions, which, in any other part of the country, might
have been attended with investigations a little inconvenient to
the supposed wizard, were here only productive of respect and
awe. The recluse being seemed somewhat gratified by the marks of
timid veneration with which an occasional passenger approached
his dwelling, the look of startled surprise with which he
surveyed his person and his premises, and the hurried step with
which he pressed his retreat as he passed the awful spot. The
boldest only stopped to gratify their curiosity by a hasty glance
at the walls of his cottage and garden, and to apologize for it
by a courteous salutation, which the inmate sometimes deigned to
return by a word or a nod. Earnscliff often passed that way, and
seldom without enquiring after the solitary inmate, who seemed
now to have arranged his establishment for life.

It was impossible to engage him in any conversation on his own
personal affairs; nor was he communicative or accessible in
talking on any other subject whatever, although he seemed to have
considerably relented in the extreme ferocity of his misanthropy,
or rather to be less frequently visited with the fits of
derangement of which this was a symptom. No argument could
prevail upon him to accept anything beyond the simplest
necessaries, although much more was offered by Earnscliff out of
charity, and by his more superstitious neighbours from other
motives. The benefits of these last he repaid by advice, when
consulted (as at length he slowly was) on their diseases, or
those of their cattle. He often furnished them with medicines
also, and seemed possessed, not only of such as were the produce
of the country, but of foreign drugs. He gave these persons to
understand, that his name was Elshender the Recluse; but his
popular epithet soon came to be Canny Elshie, or the Wise Wight
of Mucklestane-Moor. Some extended their queries beyond their
bodily complaints, and requested advice upon other matters, which
he delivered with an oracular shrewdness that greatly confirmed
the opinion of his possessing preternatural skill. The querists
usually left some offering upon a stone, at a distance from his
dwelling; if it was money, or any article which did not suit him
to accept, he either threw it away, or suffered it to remain
where it was without making use of it. On all occasions his
manners were rude and unsocial; and his words, in number, just
sufficient to express his meaning as briefly as possible, and he
shunned all communication that went a syllable beyond the matter
in hand. When winter had passed away, and his garden began to
afford him herbs and vegetables, he confined himself almost
entirely to those articles of food. He accepted,
notwithstanding, a pair of she-goats from Earnscliff, which fed
on the moor, and supplied him with milk.

When Earnscliff found his gift had been received, he soon
afterwards paid the hermit a visit. The old man was seated an a
broad flat stone near his garden door, which was the seat of
science he usually occupied when disposed to receive his patients
or clients. The inside of his hut, and that of his garden, he
kept as sacred from human intrusion as the natives of Otaheite do
their Morai;--apparently he would have deemed it polluted by the
step of any human being. When he shut himself up in his
habitation, no entreaty could prevail upon him to make himself
visible, or to give audience to any one whomsoever.

Earnscliff had been fishing in a small river at some distance.
He had his rod in his hand, and his basket, filled with trout, at
his shoulder. He sate down upon a stone nearly opposite to the
Dwarf who, familiarized with his presence, took no farther notice
of him than by elevating his huge mis-shapen head for the purpose
of staring at him, and then again sinking it upon his bosom, as
if in profound meditation. Earnscliff looked around him, and
observed that the hermit had increased his accommodations by the
construction of a shed for the reception of his goats.

You labour hard, Elshie," he said, willing to lead this singular
being into conversation.

"Labour," re-echoed the Dwarf, "is the mildest evil of a lot so
miserable as that of mankind; better to labour like me, than
sport like you."

"I cannot defend the humanity of our ordinary rural sports,
Elshie, and yet--"

"And yet," interrupted the Dwarf" they are better than your
ordinary business; better to exercise idle and wanton cruelty on
mute fishes than on your fellow-creatures. Yet why should I say
so? Why should not the whole human herd butt, gore, and gorge
upon each other, till all are extirpated but one huge and over-
fed Behemoth, and he, when he had throttled and gnawed the bones
of all his fellows--he, when his prey failed him, to be roaring
whole days for lack of food, and, finally, to die, inch by inch,
of famine--it were a consummation worthy of the race!"

"Your deeds are better, Elshie, than your words," answered
Earnscliff; "you labour to preserve the race whom your
misanthropy slanders."

"I do; but why?--Hearken. You are one on whom I look with the
least loathing, and I care not, if, contrary to my wont, I waste
a few words in compassion to your infatuated blindness. If I
cannot send disease into families, and murrain among the herds,
can I attain the same end so well as by prolonging the lives of
those who can serve the purpose of destruction as effectually?--
If Alice of Bower had died in winter, would young Ruthwin have
been slain for her love the last spring?--Who thought of penning
their cattle beneath the tower when the Red Reiver of
Westburnflat was d