right as the puir beadsman."

"No," replied Henry, as, keeping his eye on the house of the strange inhabitant, he lent his ear to the gaberlunzie man.

"It is even so," continued the old man. "It is now eighteen years, come the time, since George Melville, the last o' his ancient race, was burned for a heretic in Bordeaux. He was driven frae that mansion there, and the braw lands o' Falconcleugh, by Gilbert Blackburn, the persecutor o' the heretics, even he wha had a hand in raising the black stake at the cross o' St Andrews the day. I saw his ee, red as the burning faggots, fixed on the puir youth. I'm thinking I didna thank him for his awmous."

"You seem friendly to the heretics, Carey, yet live by the kirk," said the youth, withdrawing his eye from the chasm.

"The kirk's penny has as mony placks in't as a heretic's—the mair by token, they hae baith three," replied Carey. "I hae my ain thoughts o' the auld faith and the new doctrines; but it's better to live by the altar than be burned on't."

"It might have been well for the earthly part of Patrick Hamilton, had he observed your worldly wisdom," said Henry.

"Ay; but his soul wadna hae been in yon blue lift the night," replied Carey, looking up to the sky. "Na, na, nor might that o' puir Falconcleugh have been there afore him, if he had bowed his head at the auld altar. Yet he tried to save his body by fleeing to France—vain flight, for his persecutor, Kingsbarns, wrote incontinent to the authorities at Bordeaux, to watch him as an enemy to the holy kirk. Then cam the sough, as pleasant to the ears o' Kingsbarns as the whistlin' winds to the outlaying bluegowns, that his victim was burned. His bonny wife, ane o' the Blebos, wha fled wi' him, died o' a broken heart; and now, they say, the race is dune. Whist! whist! Gude and the rude! What's the creature doing amang the trees o' the howe at this time o' nicht?"

A rustling noise arrested the ears of the speakers, and Henry's eye was turned in the direction of the sound. The short stunted figure of a man was dimly seen down among the pines, working his way along the face of the precipice, by means of his arms alone, swinging from one stem to another, and occasionally resting for a moment, by remaining suspended, in an apparently dangerous and fearful, yet perfectly composed manner, over the water in the deep basin of the crater. Continuing this operation, in which there was clearly exercised an extraordinary brachial power and energy, he approached, with marvellous rapidity, his dwelling; and, by one or two more salient movements, in which there could not be observed, any more than in his prior progress, the slightest use made of his inferior extremities, he came to the wattled trunks lying across the cleft. Seizing these with the same extraordinary power of grasp, he hung for a few seconds in mid-air, suspended by the hands; then, by two or three successive throws and jerks, which made the pines bend and creak, he reached the insular height whereon his hovel was erected, and drawing himself up, he sat down, apparently in a resting attitude, upon the brink of the riven bank. In this position he remained for a considerable time, with his head bent downwards, as if he were wrapped in deep meditation. The rough croaking of some crows that had been disturbed by the rustling movements he had made among the pines ceased, and, in the hushed silence that again reigned over the bleak waste, there might have been heard his deep inspirations, as he drew breath after his exertions. Turning round, and applying himself again to his hands, he began to move along on the narrow space between the walls of his house and the edge of the height, making his arms the principal instruments of his progress, and using his short inferior extremities as subserving agents. The motion thus produced seemed to be a compromising medium between the crawl and the spasmodic jump of a wounded quadruped; yet he made rapid progress; went round the small dwelling, and was seen again at the other side in an attitude which showed, that, however ineffectual his lower limbs might be in the operation of ambulation, they could yet support his broad, thick-set trunk. Standing erect, he exhibited an elevation of about four feet and a-half, a stature which—in an individual of corresponding dimensions in other members—might not have been sufficient to entitle him to enter the pale of the "Droichs;" but, when viewed in relation to the almost gigantic breadth of his chest and shoulders, the troll-like size of his head, and the extreme length of his arms, could not fail, when seen through the medium of the moonlight, and in the locality of a blasted heath-waste, to suggest a relationship to some of the stout "elfin" of Scandinavian fable.

The two spectators felt all the charm of the feelings of the supernatural in watching the motions of the eremite; and, probably—in so far, at least, as regarded the younger of the two—the interest was deepened by their total inability to understand his motions, as, having looked steadfastly for a few minutes down into the chasm, he again betook himself to his quadrupedal amble; entered his hut, and emerged with something in the form of a large volume—the brass clasps of which glittered in the moonlight—bound to his waist. The small space between the door and the end of the wattled trunks he cleared by a series of short, rapid, bounding strides, without the aid of his arms; and throwing his body again on the ground, he remained in that position for a few minutes, after which he again seized the end of the trunks, swung himself along them, and entered among the trees. The dark figure of his body was now indistinctly seen moving, by the same jerking, propulsive throws, from tree to tree, by which he had cleared the space before; and, getting beneath the shadow of the mansion, he disappeared from the view of the spectators, at the same time that the cracking of a branch, amid the sound of a splash in the water, came upon their ears. They neither heard nor saw more of him. The deepest silence reigned everywhere; and the dreary scene seemed as if in an instant deprived of every trace of living sound or motion, save the deep-drawn breath and palpitating throbs of the heart of the younger of the two observers. Overcome with the pressure of awe, he sat bound to his stone-seat, and turned his eye on the face of the beadsman, where he found an expression very different from what he expected.

"Is the creature not down in that dreadful basin of pitchy waters?" muttered he.

"And if he were," replied Carey, as he twinkled his grey eye, unmoved, in the face of the youth, "what would ye do, young Master o' Riddlestain? Seek him, as the baron did his brood-sow in the well, on the top o' the towering Bech, and maybe find mair than ye want—a farrow o' young water elfs? Na, na! let him alane—he'll no drown. He's maybe even now kissing some water queen in the bottom o' the loch."

The youth looked inquiringly in the face of the bluegown; but the same expression was still there. He was sorely puzzled: the feelings of humanity were throbbing in his heart in audible pulses. The old beggar was in one of his humours, and held him by the skirt of his coat as he attempted to rise, while at the very moment, as he imagined, a human being was perishing in the waters. He sat breathless, with his ear chained to the abyss, and his eye searching in vain for some traces of meaning in the face of his arch companion. The same hushed stillness pervaded the scene of dreary desolation; neither the sound of a death-struggle nor of living motion could be distinguished, and it was as difficult to account for an individual endowed with life and the desire of self-preservation drowning without a sigh or groan, as it was for the sudden disappearance of every trace of a still living being in the dismal abyss into which he had so mysteriously descended.

"It's a' owra now, at ony rate, Master Henry!" said the bluegown, adding to the youth's perplexity by a hint so directly opposed to his prior