The figure of the tenant of the ravine was as
immovable as any other object of the view. It seemed, in all but color and
expression, of stone. An elbow was leaning on the little screen in front,
and the head was supported by a hand. At the distance of an arrow's
flight, the eye might readily have supposed it no more than another of the
accidental imitations which had been worn in the rock by the changes of
centuries. An hour passed, and scarce a limb had been changed, or a muscle
relieved. Either contemplation, or the patient awaiting of some looked-for
event, appeared to suspend the ordinary functions of life. At length, an
interruption occurred to this extraordinary inaction. A rustling, not
louder than that which would have been made by the leap of a squirrel, was
first heard in the bushes above; it was succeeded by a crackling of
branches, and then a fragment of a rock came bounding down the precipice,
until it shot over the head of the still motionless hermit, and fell, with
a noise that drew a succession of echoes from the caverns of the place,
into the ravine beneath.
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