p; but it would not let me catch it. So no more at present from

TINY.

"_P.S._--They call me Tiny yet, you see; but I intend to take the name
of Nero, after the lion fight at Warwick next week, if the lion
conquers, not else.

"_2d P.S._--I forgot to tell you that I can beg, but I like better to
steal,--it's more natural, you know.

"HARRIET, at Ockbrook."

SIR WALTER SCOTT'S VISIT TO THE BLACK DWARF.--DAVID RITCHIE'S CAT.

David Ritchie, the prototype of the "Black Dwarf," inhabited a small
cottage on the farm of Woodhouse, parish of Manor, Peeblesshire. In the
year 1797, Walter Scott, then a young advocate, was taken by the
Fergusons to see "Bowed Davie," as the poor misanthropic man was
generally called.

Mr William Chambers,[131] the historian of his native county, describes
the visit at greater length than Scott has done in the introduction to
his novel. He says--"At the first sight of Scott, the misanthrope seemed
oppressed with a sentiment of extraordinary interest, which was either
owing to the lameness of the stranger--a circumstance throwing a
narrower gulf between this person and himself than what existed between
him and most other men--or to some perception of an extraordinary mental
character in this limping youth, which was then hid from other eyes.
After grinning upon him for a moment with a smile less bitter than his
wont, the dwarf passed to the door, double-locked it, and then coming up
to the stranger, seized him by the wrist with one of his iron hands, and
said, 'Man, hae ye ony poo'er?' By this he meant magical power, to which
he had himself some vague pretensions, or which, at least, he had
studied and reflected upon till it had become with him a kind of
monomania. Scott disavowed the possession of any gifts of that kind,
evidently to the great disappointment of the inquirer, who then turned
round and gave a signal to a huge black cat, hitherto unobserved, which
immediately jumped up to a shelf, where it perched itself, and seemed to
the excited senses of the visitors as if it had really been the familiar
spirit of the mansion. 'He has poo'er,' said the dwarf in a voice which
made the flesh of the hearers thrill, and Scott, in particular, looked
as if he conceived himself to have actually got into the den of one of
those magicians with whom his studies had rendered him familiar. 'Ay,
_he_ has poo'er,' repeated the recluse; a