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- 4943
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- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.918Z
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- start_line
- 4887
- text
- sense of duty to their place. Beyond, the lake lay in one sheet of
blankness and of dumbness, unstirred by breeze or breath; fast bound
there it lay, with not life enough to reflect the smallest shrub or
twig. Yet in that lake was seen the duplicate, stirless sky above. Only
in sunshine did that lake catch gay, green images; and these but
displaced the imaged muteness of the unfeatured heavens.
On both sides, in the remoter distance, and also far beyond the mild
lake's further shore, rose the long, mysterious mountain masses; shaggy
with pines and hemlocks, mystical with nameless, vapory exhalations, and
in that dim air black with dread and gloom. At their base, profoundest
forests lay entranced, and from their far owl-haunted depths of caves
and rotted leaves, and unused and unregarded inland overgrowth of
decaying wood--for smallest sticks of which, in other climes many a
pauper was that moment perishing; from out the infinite inhumanities of
those profoundest forests, came a moaning, muttering, roaring,
intermitted, changeful sound: rain-shakings of the palsied trees,
slidings of rocks undermined, final crashings of long-riven boughs, and
devilish gibberish of the forest-ghosts.
But more near, on the mild lake's hither shore, where it formed a long
semi-circular and scooped acclivity of corn-fields, there the small and
low red farm-house lay; its ancient roof a bed of brightest mosses; its
north front (from the north the moss-wind blows), also moss-incrusted,
like the north side of any vast-trunked maple in the groves. At one
gabled end, a tangled arbor claimed support, and paid for it by generous
gratuities of broad-flung verdure, one viny shaft of which pointed
itself upright against the chimney-bricks, as if a waving lightning-rod.
Against the other gable, you saw the lowly dairy-shed; its sides close
netted with traced Madeira vines; and had you been close enough, peeping
through that imprisoning tracery, and through the light slats barring
the little embrasure of a window, you might have seen the gentle and
contented captives--the pans of milk, and the snow-white Dutch cheeses
in a row, and the molds of golden butter, and the jars of lily cream. In
front, three straight gigantic lindens stood guardians of this verdant
spot. A long way up, almost to the ridge-pole of the house, they showed
little foliage; but then, suddenly, as three huge green balloons, they
poised their three vast, inverted, rounded cones of verdure in the air.
Soon as Pierre's eye rested on the place, a tremor shook him. Not alone
because of Isabel, as there a harborer now, but because of two dependent
and most strange coincidences which that day's experience had brought to
him. He had gone to breakfast with his mother, his heart charged to
overflowing with presentiments of what would probably be her haughty
disposition concerning such a being as Isabel, claiming her maternal
love: and lo! the Reverend Mr. Falsgrave enters, and Ned and Delly are
discussed, and that whole sympathetic matter, which Pierre had despaired
of bringing before his mother in all its ethic bearings, so as
absolutely to learn her thoughts upon it, and thereby test his own
conjectures; all that matter had been fully talked about; so that,
through that strange coincidence, he now perfectly knew his mother's
mind, and had received forewarnings, as if from heaven, not to make any
present disclosure to her. That was in the morning; and now, at eve
catching a glimpse of the house where Isabel was harboring, at once he
recognized it as the rented farm-house of old Walter Ulver, father to
the self-same Delly, forever ruined through the cruel arts of Ned.
- title
- Chunk 2