In the pretty little village of Newabbey, in the south of Scotland, there lived one of those individuals which society sometimes casts up, as the sea does its secret monsters, formed apparently for no other purpose than to show how curiously operose nature can be in her productions, though mankind, ever in search for final causes, may attempt to wrest out of such eccentricities some moral to suit their self-love, and, by producing a contrast, elevate themselves in the scale of moral or physical being. That strange person, Cuthbert Grandison--or, as he was generally termed, Cubby Grindstane, by the corruptive ingenuity of his neighbours--occupied a small mud cottage near the centre of the village we have mentioned. He was considerably advanced in age, and, having come to Newabbey at a late period of his life, the people in that part of the country knew little of his history--a circumstance they regretted in proportion to the interest excited by the strange habits of the individual. He was in person a little man; extremely spare; with a sharp keen, hungry look; a grey hawk's eye, which, like the cat's, seemed to enjoy the best vision collaterally, for the pupil was almost always at the junction of the eyelids. On his back there was a large hump, which being the only rotundity which his spare body presented, gave him the appearance of a skeleton carrying a lump of beef; and, as his mode of walking was quick and hurried, a quaint fancy could not resist the additional suggestion, that he was running home with it in order to satisfy the hunger that shone through his fleshless form. The extraordinary appearance of such a wild and grotesque-looking individual, in so small a village, could not fail to produce the usual speculation among the high-mutched gossips, who, having in vain made inquiries and exerted their wits as to his origin, directed their attention to his habits, and especially to the mode in which he earned his livelihood--for no one could say he was ever seen to beg. But they were not much more successful in these secondary inquiries and investigations; because, (although it was certain that he had a signboard, exhibiting the characters, "Cuthbert Grandison, Cobbler"--an unusual and somewhat affected and gratuitous depreciation of the votary of St Crispin--and sometimes sat at his small window, perforating soles with his awl, and filling up the holes with "tackets,") no one in the village employed him, and he never condescended to ask any one for work. If his operations thus afforded no proper clue to his means of life, his conversation was, if possible, still more sterile; for, in place of associating with the other "snabs" of the village, or joining the quidnunes who assembled in Widow Cruickshanks', to drink beer and "twine political arguments"--a much harder labour than their day's work, though they thought it a recreation--he locked himself, and another individual