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."

"It is the lot of the wild tribes of nature," said Isabella, "but
chiefly of those who