“Yes, ‘tis thus thou shouldst think--‘tis thus thou shouldst speak, if ever human speech and thought kept touch with each other! They do not--they do not--Alas! they cannot. And yet--wait here an instant--stir not till my return.” He went to his little garden, and returned with a half-blown rose. “Thou hast made me shed a tear, the first which has wet my eyelids for many a year; for that good deed receive this token of gratitude. It is but a common rose; preserve it, however, and do not part with it. Come to me in your hour of adversity. Show me that rose, or but one leaf of it, were it withered as my heart is--if it should be in my fiercest and wildest movements of rage against a hateful world, still it will recall gentler thoughts to my bosom, and perhaps afford happier prospects to thine. But no message,” he exclaimed, rising into his usual mood of misanthropy,--“no message--no go-between! Come thyself; and the heart and the doors that are shut against every other earthly being, shall open to thee and to thy sorrows. And now pass on.” He let go the bridle-rein, and the young lady rode on, after expressing her thanks to this singular being, as well as her surprise at the extraordinary nature of his address would permit, often turning back to look at the Dwarf, who still remained at the door of his habitation, and watched her progress over the moor towards her father’s castle of Ellieslaw, until the brow of the hill hid the party from his sight. The ladies, meantime, jested with Miss Vere on the strange interview they had just had with the far-famed wizard of the Moor. “Isabella has all the luck at home and abroad! Her hawk strikes down the black-cock; her eyes wound the gallant; no chance for her poor companions and kinswomen; even the conjuror cannot escape the force of her charms. You should, in compassion, cease to be such an engrosser, my dear Isabel, or at least set up shop, and sell off all the goods you do not mean to keep for your own use.” “You shall have them all,” replied Miss Vere, “and the conjuror to boot, at a very easy rate.” “No! Nancy shall have the conjuror,” said Miss Ilderton, “to supply deficiencies; she’s not quite a witch herself, you know.” “Lord, sister,” answered the younger Miss Ilderton, “what could I do with so frightful a monster? I kept my eyes shut, after once glancing at him; and, I protest, I thought I saw him still, though I winked as close as ever I could.” “That’s a pity,” said her sister; “ever while you live, Nancy, choose an admirer whose faults can be hid by winking at them.--Well, then, I must take him myself, I suppose, and put him into mamma’s Japan cabinet, in order to show that Scotland can produce a specimen of mortal clay moulded into a form ten thousand times uglier than the imaginations of Canton and Pekin, fertile as they are in monsters, have immortalized in porcelain.”