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 deemed to be on his death-bed?—­My draughts, my skill, recovered him.  And, now, who dare leave his herd upon the lea without a watch, or go to bed without unchaining the sleuth-hound?”