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.”

“There is something,” said Miss Vere, “so melancholy in the situation of this poor man, that I cannot enter into your mirth, Lucy, so readily as usual.  If he has no resources, how is he to exist in this waste country, living, as he does, at such a distance from mankind? and if he has the means of securing occasional assistance, will not the very suspicion that he is possessed of them, expose him to plunder and assassination by some of our unsettled neighbours?”

“But you forget that they say he is a warlock,” said Nancy Ilderton.

“And, if his magic diabolical should fail him,” rejoined her sister, “I would have him trust to his magic natural, and thrust his enormous head, and most preternatural visage, out at his door or window, full in view of the assailants.  The boldest robber that ever rode would hardly bide a second glance of him.  Well, I wish I had the use of that Gorgon head of his for only one half hour.”

“For what purpose, Lucy?” said Miss Vere.

“O!  I would frighten out of the castle that dark, stiff, and stately Sir Frederick Langley, that is so great a favourite with your father, and so little a favourite of yours.  I protest I shall be obliged to the Wizard as long as I live, if it were only for the half hour’s relief from that man’s company which we have gained by deviating from the party to visit Elshie.”