parition of the woods. "And to speak truth and shame the de'il," says the genial Hobbie, later on, when familiarity might have been supposed to rob the Dwarf of a measure of his fearsomeness, "though Elshie's a real honest fallow, yet somegate I would rather take daylight wi' me when I gang to visit him."

But while Davie shunned his fellowmen, with Nature, ever indifferent to the outward form of her children, he held closest communion. He would spend hours together gazing into her face. The stunted body was linked to the soul of a poet and the eye of an artist. With all the fierce force of baffled human affection, he turned to pour out his whole soul in the loving contemplation of her commonest features. One can fancy the Manor Water a keen delight to him at all times. The heathcrowned hills, a pool of limpid water, a common wayside flower, a thicket hedge, one and all to him were mines of inexhaustible joy. Some books he had, strange books for one like him, "Hervey's Meditations Among the Tombs," Shenstone's "Pastorals," Milton's "Paradise Lost." Parts of these he knew; but Nature's book, ever open at fresh pages, he loved the best.

When he had finished his modest home, with its miniature doorway, he took a small piece of the waste ground behind it and enclosed it in a wall whose solidity rivalled those of his cottage; and on this tiny square he lavished the tenderest care that nurse ever bestowed on a cherished nursling. He toiled late and early, dug and planted and watered with unwearying patience, until this patch of wild moorland, like some oasis in the desert, rejoiced and blossomed as a rose.

Davie cultivated roots and fruits, and grew to understand that medicines were made from them, and to discriminate between those good for one disease and those capable of curing others.

By and by the few straggling neighbors for miles round came to know that the Dwarf was learned in alchemy. On the strength of his curing their ailments they braved his fearsome surroundings, and came to consult this strange individual (than whom Hobbie Elliot had never seen anyone "liker a bogle") who, it was whispered, held mysterious dealings with the Old One, that invested him with a supernatural power at once awful and attractive. So it came to be a regular thing (at least when the spirit moved him) for Davie to take up his position on a large stone (the muckle stane) close by his door, and there he was waited on as an oracle might be. At other times he gave utterances to his dark sayings from behind the narrow shuttered slit that served him as window. So Scott represents him, surly and inaccessible, when Hobbie comes to consult him in his extremity after Grace Armstrong has been mysteriously kidnapped.

To maintain himself the Dwarf sold these home-made drugs, the produce of his garden and the honey from his bees. This all brought in something, and for the rest, it was thought a small thing in those kindly days for the nearest farmer or proprietor to contribute towards the support of one like Bowed Davie. Indeed, so commonly admitted was Davie's claim on the scattered community, that at the nearest mill there was a bag dedicated to him, and no one buying a sack for himself, but would make a point of dropping a handful into Davie's bag.

But in the midst of this universal charity Davie's spirit was in no danger of being pauperized. No king coming to his own could have accepted with more assurance and less demonstration what came his way; and many a time the benefactor was obliged to retire with the unaccountable sensation that in some mysterious way he had become the benefited.

On metaphorically dark days, when the world had gone wrong, as it were, when he had been hurt or jarred or slighted (and likely as not these predominated in the Dwarf's existence), he would lock himself into his little room, and, like Sister Anne, put his eye to the narrow slit in the shuttered square, and watch to see if anyone were coming. If some unfortunate did come to consult the oracle that day, his welcome was of the gruffest, if indeed his presence were acknowledged at all, the conversation carried on through the closed shutter being, on the Dwarf's part, of the baldest and chilliest nature. If the visitor were armed with an offering (tue uncertain temper of his host made this often assume the shape of a peace-offering), the Dwarf reconnoitred it from his vantage-ground. If his jealous, suspicious temper suspected the article in question to be what an ordinary beggar might have had presented to him, woe betide the giver! If valueless in the Dwarf's critical eyes, it might remain on the big stone, where it had been deposited, unheeded by him. If he judged it worth his acceptance, it was taken without thanks.

He imposed himself on the charity of the public with all the assurance of a potentate levying a tax, and not only for mere chance gifts. Now and again, when the social instinct implanted in man struggled with and triumphed over the unnatural solitude, the hatred of his fellows and the fear of their ridicule, he would emerge from his lonely hut and walk great distances to different farms or houses, where he stopped a night or two if well-treated. But it was essential that he should be treated as an honored guest, not as an ordinary beggar or chance wayfarer, or the fierce, smouldering vindictiveness of the man instantly burst into flame. If insult or even unintentional slight were offered him it was enough to open his floodgates of fury pent up within

the bosom and only waiting to break forth into frenzy. The offence was noted against the offender forever. His feelings would pour forth in such a volley of abuse, of imprecations and invectives as left no doubt in the minds of his hearers as to Davie's sentiments concerning them.

On one of those visiting-tours Davie was informed that the house was full, the spare-room occupied, and that for sleeping-quarters the hay-loft was the best available. The Dwarf received the information in grim silence; but there being nothing for it, he retired to the loft in due course. Next morning, a servant astir outside early was attracted by something moving in an apple-tree. It was the Dwarf, who in tones of offended dignity informed her he had spent the night here in preference to her mistress's hay-loft.

He has commemorated these visits by some scrappy jottings of his own composition. Here are a few brief extracts conveying in his own terse language some idea of his style of thought and conversation.

my Hogmanay here. . . . Came in by Hundlesoup, and gaed to Peebles on Hansel Monenday, to see James Ritchie, my friend the piper, and some mae. Saw him; he had been getting mony or hansel, and had been tastin'. Renewed the auld controversy about the earth gaun round; he was clean against it, I was for't. He spak muckle to the purpose, but I spak mair. "Hout," says I, "James, ye're clean wrang, think a wee." "Faith, deel a bit," says he; "I've lived here this five and fiefty year and Bigiesnow's neither up nor down, back nor forret, sin' I cam' til't." I could mak' naething o' him, sae left him to settle accounts wi' the whiskybottle. He was aye clear for it gaun round, at ony rate. Was followed by some damned brush [rubbish] as if I had been a world's wonder-could pour seething lead down through them. Hell'll never be fu' till they're in't. Mony ane got the length of my kent [cudgel].

The Dwarf must have been in his own way an amusing companion, for his visits were somewhat coveted by the country people round. But he was perfectly aware that he was in request, and the house that had offered him a slight, needless to say, had henceforth its days numbered.

It seemed as if vindictiveness and revenge were the natural offspring of his distorted mind. For example, a lady, whose family had long known and been kind to Davie, came to see him one day, bringing a friend with her. The Dwarf, for him, was genial, and led his visitors into the garden where, as a rule, the produce grew and flourished. There happened, however, to be one bed of cabbages completely destroyed by worms. On coming to this the lady, innocent of intent to wound, smiled, and at this unlucky moment her host turned and caught the smile. His whole face instantly underwent a transformation; the slight smile had completely overthrown his balance. He flew into a towering passion amounting to frenzy, made a violent dash at the offending cabbage-bed with his cudgel, and called out in his terrible, rasping, uncouth voice, that surely was like nothing human, "I hate the worms, for they mock me!" On other occasions, with provocation as slight, he would turn his visitors out of the garden by force.

In 1802 the hut he had built with so much labor fell into disrepair, and the proprietor, on whose ground Davie had selected his site, very good-naturedly sent men to re-erect it, substituting a slated roof for the original thatched one. As master-builder and clerk of the works the Dwarf was no doubt in his element, ordering and arranging, perhaps hectoring and tyrannizing over those whom for the nonce fate had constituted his underlings. All this he accepted in his usual spirit, grimly, without expression of gratitude, as a right— a right that by common consent was

accorded him, so well had he succeeded in holding his own, this alert, suspicious, jealous nature so quick to take offence, and, once offended, harboring the spirit of vindictiveness and revenge to the end.

He

It was in the time of the old cottage, in 1797, that Scott, staying in the neighborhood, was taken by his host to pay the Dwarf a visit as a curiosity. was then a young man. By some strange, unexplained magnetism Davie took a fancy to him, if he could have been said ever to take to anyone. Did he recognize a mind above the common, or because Scott's lameness made him physically imperfect, did that lessen the immeasurable distance that to the Dwarf's distorted fancy yawned between him and the rest of humanity? But indeed did not everybody who met him come under the spell of Sir Walter?

However it was with Davie, the visit made a deep impression on Scott. He entered the low room, and the Dwarf locked and double-locked the door in a way that somehow added to the strange effect of his surroundings and his own gruesome personality.

"Ha'e ye ony po'er?" suddenly burst out the Duarf, fixing him with his fierce, dark eyes and seizing him by the wrist, speaking in his rasping, uncouth jargon, with perhaps a horrible accompaniment of laugh and grimace, enough to make one's flesh creep. Scott replied that he had no supernatural power. To enhance the effect of the situation, at this moment a black cat jumped on to the floor from a shelf. "He has po'er," exclaimed the Dwarf, pointing at the animal with a horrible chuckle. The story goes that, when released from his imprisonment, Scott was pale and agitated, his uppermost sensation being one of intense relief, as when we emerge into pure daylight and sunshine after some vitiated underground atmosphere. But how powerfully Scott was moved,

Jock being presumably one of his pet aversions. With a touch of romance that was rarely absent from him, and with an ambition that would have done credit to some old Norse king, or ancient Highland chief, who coveted a grave where he might wrap himself in impenetrable solitude, he selected the purple crest of the mountain that towered above the scene of his earthly dwelling for his last resting-place. There he wished to sleep, far from human ken, in the solitude of Nature and Nature's God.

But whether he altered his mind before the end, or whether his wishes were disregarded, his characteristic desire was never carried out. We had but to turn from his cottage and stroll down the slope we had ascended, and in the tiny hamlet of Kirkton, in the quaint little churchyard of Manor, we discovered the Black Dwarf's grave, over which was erected half a century ago a plain tombstone with name and date. And it is due perhaps to the same kindly hands that one slender mountain-ash should cast its shadow on the low green mound. In life he had planted them about his dwelling, clinging with childish superstition to the belief that they were a protection against evil spirits. It is somewhat touching to find that, while encouraging the stories that credited him with supernatural power, shrewdly suspecting that they increased his influence in the glen, he himself was beset with a similar weakness.

The

In winter the winds, as they sweep the glen, rage and howl above his tomb; many of the surrounding stones that front the east are propped with iron bars. But the autumn was at its brightest as I looked upon it. sough of the breeze and the sound of the wimpling burn mingled in my ears, and the western sun shot its long slanting rays on these words: "In memory of David Ritchie, the original of the

Erected by

Black Dwarf, died 1811. W. and R. Chambers, 1845." Every outward sign and symbol seemed to give assurance of peace at last. The Black Dwarf had entered

on his rest. He had penetrated that mystery whose brooding form had overshadowed all his life with bitterMacmillan's Magazine.

ness and pain. It was as if the stillness and the sunshine, all the common things of Nature, seemed to say that the poor tempest-tossed bark, through turbulent seas and cross-currents, through shoals and quicksands, had reached port at last.

A. Fraser Robertson.

As animals' beds are almost the only pieces of furniture which they construct, so their sleeping places or bedrooms represent most nearly their notion of "home." The place selected to pass the hours of sleep, whether by night or day, is more often than not devoid of any efforts at construction. It is chosen for some qualities which strike the owner as suitable for rest and quiet, and from that moment it arouses in the animal mind some part of the human sentiment which we know as "the love of home." This association of ideas with their sleeping places is entirely distinct from the socalled "homing instinct," or sense of direction. It is a sentiment, not a mental process, and is exhibited by creatures which are not commonly credited with memory or the power of thought. Some butterflies, for example, return regularly to the same place to sleep, and their proverbial flightiness does not prevent them from entertaining the sentiment of home. The first vindication of butterfly memory was occasioned by the regularity with which a small butterfly named Precis Iphita returned to sleep in a veranda of a musical club at Manghasar, in the Dutch East India Islands. Mr. C. Piepers, a member of the Dutch Entomological Society, noticed that this butterfly returned to the same place on

the ceiling during the evening. In the day it was absent, but at nightfall, in spite of the brilliant illumination of the veranda, it was again sleeping in the same spot. "It was not to be found in the daytime, being probably absent on business," writes Mr. Piepers; "but as civilization has not advanced so far in Manghasar that it is there considered necessary to drive away every harmless creature which ventures into a human dwelling, I had the pleasure of admiring the memory of this butterfly for six consecutive nights. Then some accident probably befell it, for I never saw any trace of it again."

It is difficult to imagine a spot with less domestic features to adorn the home than a piece of the bare ceiling of a tropical veranda; but the attachment of animals to their chosen sleeping place must rest on some preference quite clear to their own consciousness, though not evident to us. In some instances the ground of choice is intelligible. Many of the small blue British butterflies have greyish spotted backs to their wings. At night they fly regularly to sheltered corners on the chalk downs where they live, alight head downwards on the tops of the grasses which there flourish, and closing and lowering their wings as far as possible, look exactly like a seed-head on the