at comfort, what
anguish, what despair, in the roll of its coming or its parting wheels!
In the spring, when the old people get the coughs which give them a few
shakes and their lives drop in pieces like the ashes of a burned thread
which have kept the threadlike shape until they were stirred,--in the hot
summer noons, when the strong man comes in from the fields, like the son
of the Shunamite, crying, "My head, my head,"--in the dying autumn days,
when youth and maiden lie fever-stricken in many a household,
still-faced, dull-eyed, dark-flushed, dry-lipped, low-muttering in their
daylight dreams, their fingers moving singly like those of slumbering
harpers,--in the dead winter, when the white plague of the North has
caged its wasted victims, shuddering as they think of the frozen soil
which must be quarried like rock to receive them, if their perpetual
convalescence should happen to be interfered with by any untoward
accident,--at every season, the narrow sulky rolled round freighted with
unmeasured burdens of joy and woe.

The Doctor drove along the southern foot of The Mountain. The "Dudley
Mansion" was near the eastern edge of this declivity, where it rose
steepest, with baldest cliffs and densest patches of overhanging wood.
It seemed almost too steep to climb, but a practised eye could see from a
distance the zigzag lines of the sheep-paths which scaled it like
miniature Alpine roads. A few hundred feet up The Mountain's side was a
dark deep dell, unwooded, save for a few spindling, crazy-looking
hackmatacks or native larches, with pallid green tufts sticking out
fantastically all over them. It shelved so deeply, that, while the
hemlock-tassels were swinging on the trees around its border, all would
be still at its springy bottom, save that perhaps a single fern would
wave slowly backward and forward like a sabre with a twist as of a
feathered oar,--and this when not a breath could be felt, and every other
stem and blade were motionless. There was an old story of one having
perished here in the winter of '86, and his body having been found in the
spring,--whence its common name of "Dead-Man's Hollow." Higher up there
were huge cliffs with chasms, and, it was thought, concealed caves, where
in old times they said that Tories lay hid,--some hinted not without
occasional aid and comfort from the Dudleys then living in the
mansion-house. Still higher and farther west lay the accursed
ledge,--shunned by all, unle