not without a touch of warlock power readily believed in at that time. By the farmers and resident lairds of the district, to whom he paid annual visits, he was kindly treated; and he would condescend to accept small sums of money, and gifts of domestic supply, provided they were not quite of the kind given to the ordinary mendicant. He took sixpences, but hated to keep them, always turning them, when amassed, into shillings and half - crowns, which he carefully hoarded. He was not profuse in his thanks,— rather took what was given him as his due.

On an evening after Scott's arrival at Hallyards, it was proposed by his host that Scott and he should pay a visit to the cottage of the Dwarf, situated at the base of the eastern slope of the Woodhouse Hill-"Wudduss" they called it in those days. We can fancy the interest of the prospect of such a visit to Scott, on whose imagination the old world was hovering as a shapeless but stirring moving dream. We can picture the two-the venerable Professor with his slim erect figure and flowing hair, and the young advocate, with his limping gait-making their way across the low-lying haughs by the stream

in the quiet of the summer evening,-to be afterwards famous as "Mucklestane Moor."

Once within the cottage the interview is well told in these words:

At the first sight of Scott, the misanthrope seemed oppressed with a sentiment of extraordinary interest, which was either owing to the lameness of the stranger, -a circumstance throwing a narrower gulf between him and most other men, or to some perception of an extraordinary mental character in this limping youth, which was then hid from other eyes. After grinning upon him for a moment with a smile less bitter than his wont, the Dwarf passed to the door, double-locked it, and then coming up to the stranger, seized him by the wrist with one of his iron hands, and said: "Man, hae ye ony poo'er?" By this he meant magical power, to which he had himself some vague pretensions, or which, at least, he had studied and reflected upon till it had become with him a kind of monomania. Scott disavowed the possession of any gifts of that kind, evidently to the great disappointment of the inquirer, who then turned round and gave a signal to a huge black cat, hitherto unobserved, which immediately jumped up to a shelf, where it perched itself, and seemed to the excited senses of the visitors as if it had really been the familiar spirit of the mansion. "He has poo'er," said the Dwarf, in a voice which made the flesh of the hearers thrill; and Scott, in particular, looked as

if he conceived himself to have actually got into the den of one of those magicians with whom his studies had rendered him familiar. "Ay, he has poo'er," repeated the Recluse; and then, going to his usual seat, he sat for some minutes grinning horribly, as if enjoying the impression he had made, while not a word escaped from any of the party. Mr Ferguson at length plucked up his spirits, and called to David to open the door, as they must now be going. The Dwarf slowly obeyed, and when they had got out, Mr Ferguson observed that his friend was as pale as ashes, while his person was agitated in every limb.1

The picture of "Elshender the Recluse," nineteen years afterwards, testifies to the strength and permanency of the impression made in the lonely cottage on the young imagination of the future Master of Romance; and it testifies not less to the accuracy of his memory. There is hardly a trait in the character of the Black Dwarf of the novel which had not its counterpart in the original-always excepting, of course, the concealed quality of the Recluse as a personage of birth and fortune, and the motive of his withdrawal from the world as disappointment in love. Among other points, this very scene is re

1 Chambers's History of Peeblesshire, pp. 403, 404.

produced by Scott, along with an almost literally accurate description of the interior of the cottage. The only difference is that Isabella Vere, and not Scott himself, is the person who has been admitted at night to the dwelling, when seeking the Dwarf's help against her forced marriage with the scheming and brutal Sir Frederick Langley.

The door opened [we are told], and the Solitary stood before her, his uncouth form and features illuminated by the iron lamp which he held in his hand. . . . She entered. . . . The Recluse's first act, after setting the lamp upon the table, was to replace the numerous bolts which secured the door of his hut. She shrunk as she heard the noise which accompanied this ominous operation. . . . The light of the lamp was weak and uncertain; but the Solitary, without taking immediate notice of Isabella, otherwise than by motioning her to sit down on a small settle beside the fireplace, made haste to kindle some dry furze, which presently cast a blaze through the cottage. Wooden shelves, which bore a few books, some bundles of dried herbs, and one or two wooden cups and platters, were on one side of the fire; on the other were placed some ordinary tools of field-labour, mingled with those used by mechanics. Where the bed should have been, there was a wooden frame, strewed with withered moss and rushes, the couch of the ascetic. The whole space of the cottage did not

exceed ten feet by six within the walls; and its only furniture, besides what we have mentioned, was a table and two stools formed of rough deals.

The first part of this is a picture in words, after the best manner of Rembrandt; the latter is a literal representation after Teniers or Gerard Dow.

When Scott thus first saw the Black Dwarf, the latter would be fifty-five or fifty-six years of age. He was born at Easter Happrew, in the adjoining parish of Stobo, in 1740 or 1741. His father, William Ritchie, was a labouring man, working in the slate-quarry there; his mother was a weakly rheumatic woman, - Annabel Niven. Hence, probably, curiously enough, the Annaple of the novel as the name of the nurse in the family of the Heugh-foot. He was doubtless born deformed, but the poverty of his early surroundings and lack of motherly care unquestionably contributed to intensify the oddity of the misshapen creature. If David, the boy, attended school at all, it was only for a few months, his father and mother dying while he was very young. He learned to read, but it is doubtful if he could write. As a youngster he did some