ns, subsequent alliances were so far from being excluded,
that the hand of a daughter or a sister was the most frequent gage of
reconciliation. You laugh at my skill in romance; but, I assure you,
should your history be written, like that of many a less distressed and
less deserving heroine, the well-judging reader would set you down for
the lady and the love of Earnscliff; from the very obstacle which you
suppose so insurmountable."

"But these are not the days of romance, but of sad reality, for there
stands the castle of Ellieslaw."

"And there stands Sir Frederick Langley at the gate, waiting to assist
the ladies from their palfreys. I would as lief touch a toad; I will
disappoint him, and take old Horsington the groom for my master of the
horse."

So saying, the lively young lady switched her palfrey forward, and
passing Sir Frederick with a familiar nod as he stood ready to take
her horse's rein, she cantered on, and jumped into the arms of the old
groom. Fain would Isabella have done the same had she dared; but her
father stood near, displeasure already darkening on a countenance
peculiarly qualified to express the harsher passions, and she was
compelled to receive the unwelcome assiduities of her detested suitor.

CHAPTER VI.

Let not us that are squires of the night's body be called
thieves of the day's booty; let us be Diana's foresters,
gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon.
--HENRY THE FOURTH, PART I.

The Solitary had consumed the remainder of that day in which he had the
interview with the young ladies, within the precincts of his garden.
Evening again found him seated on his favourite stone. The sun setting
red, and among seas of rolling clouds, threw a gloomy lustre over the
moor, and gave a deeper purple to the broad outline of heathy mountains
which surrounded this desolate spot. The Dwarf sate watching the clouds
as they lowered above each other in masses of conglomerated vapours,
and, as a strong lurid beam of the sinking luminary darted full on his
solitary and uncouth figure, he might well have seemed the demon of
the storm which was gathering, or some gnome summoned forth from the
recesses of the earth by the subterranean signals of its approach. As he
sate thus, with his dark eye turned towards the scowling and blackening
heaven, a horseman rode rapidly up to him, and stopping, as if to
let his horse breathe for an instant, made a sort of obeisance to the
anc