Within these narrow precincts Isabella now found herself enclosed with a being, whose history had nothing to reassure her, and the fearful conformation of whose hideous countenance inspired an almost superstitious terror.  He occupied the seat opposite to her, and dropping his huge and shaggy eyebrows over his piercing black eyes, gazed at her in silence, as if agitated by a variety of contending feelings.  On the other side sate Isabella, pale as death, her long hair uncurled by the evening damps, and falling over her shoulders and breast, as the wet streamers droop from the mast when the storm has passed away, and left the vessel stranded on the beach.  The Dwarf first broke the silence with the sudden, abrupt, and alarming question,—­“Woman, what evil fate has brought thee hither?”

“My father’s danger, and your own command,” she replied faintly, but firmly.

“And you hope for aid from me?”

“If you can bestow it,” she replied, still in the same tone of mild submission.

“And how should I possess that power?” continued the Dwarf, with a bitter sneer; “Is mine the form of a redresser of wrongs?  Is this the castle in which one powerful enough to be sued to by a fair suppliant is likely to hold his residence?  I but mocked thee, girl, when I said I would relieve thee.”

“Then must I depart, and face my fate as I best may!”

“No!” said the Dwarf, rising and interposing between her and the door, and motioning to her sternly to resume her seat—­“No! you leave me not in this way; we must have farther conference.  Why should one being desire aid of another?  Why should not each be sufficient to itself?  Look round you—­I, the most despised and most decrepit on Nature’s common, have required sympathy and help from no one.  These stones are of my own piling; these utensils I framed with my own hands; and with this”—­and he laid his hand with a fierce smile on the long dagger which he always wore beneath his garment, and unsheathed it so far that the blade glimmered clear in the fire-light—­“with this,” he pursued, as he thrust the weapon back into the scabbard, “I can, if necessary, defend the vital spark enclosed in this poor trunk, against the fairest and strongest that shall threaten me with injury.”

It was with difficulty Isabella refrained from screaming out aloud; but she did refrain.

“This,” continued the Recluse, “is the life of nature, solitary, self-sufficing, and independent.  The wolf calls not the wolf to aid him in forming his den; and the vulture invites not another to assist her in striking down her prey.”

“And when they are unable to procure themselves support,” said Isabella, judiciously thinking that he would be most accessible to argument couched in his own metaphorical style, “what then is to befall them?”

“Let them starve, die, and be forgotten; it is the common lot of humanity.”