- end_line
- 5977
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.921Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 5953
- text
- significance of that deep forest silence, viewed its marvelous
impendings. A flitting conceit had often crossed him, that he would like
nothing better for a head-stone than this same imposing pile; in which,
at times, during the soft swayings of the surrounding foliage, there
seemed to lurk some mournful and lamenting plaint, as for some sweet boy
long since departed in the antediluvian time.
Not only might this stone well have been the wonder of the simple
country round, but it might well have been its terror. Sometimes,
wrought to a mystic mood by contemplating its ponderous inscrutableness,
Pierre had called it the Terror Stone. Few could be bribed to climb its
giddy height, and crawl out upon its more hovering end. It seemed as if
the dropping of one seed from the beak of the smallest flying bird would
topple the immense mass over, crashing against the trees.
It was a very familiar thing to Pierre; he had often climbed it, by
placing long poles against it, and so creeping up to where it sloped in
little crumbling stepping-places; or by climbing high up the neighboring
beeches, and then lowering himself down upon the forehead-like summit by
the elastic branches. But never had he been fearless enough--or rather
fool-hardy enough, it may be, to crawl on the ground beneath the vacancy
of the higher end; that spot first menaced by the Terror Stone should it
ever really topple.
- title
- Chunk 3