While the
inhabitants of the settlement were thus struggling between passions so
contradictory, the shades of evening gradually fell upon their village,
and then came darkness, with the rapid strides with which it follows the
setting of the sun in a low latitude.
Some time before the shadows of the trees were getting the grotesque and
exaggerated forms which precede the last rays of the luminary, and while
the people were still listening to their pastor, a solitary individual was
placed on a giddy eyrie, whence he might note the movements of those who
dwelt in the hamlet, without being the subject of observation himself. A
short spur of the mountain projected into the valley, on the side nearest
to the dwelling of the Heathcotes. A little tumbling brook, which the
melting of the snows and the occasionally heavy rains of the climate
periodically increased into a torrent, had worn a deep ravine in its rocky
bosom. Time, and the constant action of water, aided by the driving storms
of winter and autumn, had converted many of the different faces of this
ravine into wild-looking pictures of the residences of men.
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