1830
TWICE-TOLD TALES
THE HOLLOW OF THE THREE HILLS
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
IN THOSE STRANGE OLD TIMES, when fantastic dreams and madmen's
reveries were realized among the actual circumstances of life, two
persons met together at an appointed hour and place. One was a lady,
graceful in form and fair of feature, though pale and troubled, and
smitten with an untimely blight in what should have been the fullest
bloom of her years; the other was an ancient and meanly-dressed woman,
of ill-favored aspect, and so withered, shrunken, and decrepit, that
even the space since she began to decay must have exceeded the
ordinary term of human existence. In the spot where they
encountered, no mortal could observe them. Three little hills stood
near each other, and down in the midst of them sunk a hollow basin,
almost mathematically circular, two or three hundred feet in
breadth, and of such depth that a stately cedar might but just be
visible above the sides. Dwarf pines were numerous upon the hills, and
partly fringed the outer verge of the intermediate hollow, within
which there was nothing but the brown grass of October, and here and
there a tree trunk that had fallen long ago, and lay mouldering with
no green successor from its roots.
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