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?"

"I own," answered Earnscliff; "you did little good to society by the
last of these cures. But, to balance the evil, there is my friend
Hobbie, honest Hobbie of the Heugh-foot, your skill relieved him last
winter in a fever that might have cost him his life."

"Thus think the children of clay in their ignorance," said: the Dwarf,
smiling maliciously, "and thus they speak in their folly. Have you
marked the young cub of a wild cat that has been domesticated, how
sportive, how playful, how gentle,--but trust him with your game, your
lambs, your poultry, his inbred ferocity breaks forth; he gripes, tears,
ravages, and devours."

"Such is the animal's instinct," answered Earnscliff; "but what has that
to do with Hobbie?"

"It is his emblem--it is his picture," retorted the Recluse. "He is
at present tame, quiet, and domesticated, for lack of opportunity to
exercise his inborn propensities; but let the trumpet of war sound--let
the young blood-hound snuff blood, he will be as ferocious as the
wildest of his Border ancestors that ever fired a helpless peasant's