Page:Tales of my landlord (Volume 1).djvu/97

 figure was also occasionally seen sitting beside him. at the door, walking with him in the moor, or assisting him in fetching water from his fountain. Earnscliff explained this phænomenon by supposing it to be the Dwarf's shadow.—"De'il a shadow has he," replied Hobbie Elliot, who was a strenuous defender of the general opinion; "he's ower far in wi' the Auld Ane to have a shadow. Besides," he argued more logically, "whaever heard of a shadow that cam between a body and the sun? and this thing, be it what it will, is bigger and taller than the body himsel, and has been seen to come between him and the sun mair than anes or twice either."

These suspicions, which, in any other part of the country, might have been attended with investigations a little inconvenient to the supposed wizard, were here only productive of respect and awe. The recluse being seemed somewhat gratified by the marks of timid veneration