He took a sister, latterly, to live in a hut adjacent to his own, but
he did not permit her to enter it. She was weak in intellect, but not
deformed in person; simple, or rather silly, but not, like her brother,
sullen or bizarre. David was never affectionate to her; it was not in
his nature; but he endured her. He maintained himself and her by the
sale of the product of their garden and bee-hives; and, latterly,
they had a small allowance from the parish. Indeed, in the simple
and patriarchal state in which the country then was, persons in the
situation of David and his sister were sure to be supported. They had
only to apply to the next gentleman or respectable farmer, and were sure
to find them equally ready and willing to supply their very moderate
wants. David often received gratuities from strangers, which he never
asked, never refused, and never seemed to consider as an obligation. He
had a right, indeed, to regard himself as one of Nature's paupers,
to whom she gave a title to be maintained by his kind, even by that
deformity which closed against him all ordinary ways of supporting
himself by his own labour. Besides, a bag was suspended in the mill for
David Ritchie's benefit; and those who were carrying home a melder of
meal, seldom failed to add a GOWPEN [Handful] to the alms-bag of the
deformed cripple. In short, David had no occasion for money, save to
purchase snuff, his only luxury, in which he indulged himself liberally.
When he died, in the beginning of the present century, he was found
to have hoarded about twenty pounds, a habit very consistent with his
disposition; for wealth is power, and power was what David Ritchie
desired to possess, as a compensation for his exclusion from human
society.

His sister survived till the publication of the tale to which this brief
notice forms the introduction; and the author is sorry to learn that a
sort of "local sympathy," and the curiosity then expressed concerning