THE HOLLOW OF THE THREE HILLS.
In those strange old times when fantastic dreams and madmen's reverieswere realized among the actual circumstances of life, two persons mettogether at an appointed hour and place. One was a lady graceful inform and fair of feature, though pale and troubled and smitten with anuntimely blight in what should have been the fullest bloom of heryears; the other was an ancient and meanly-dressed woman ofill-favored aspect, and so withered, shrunken and decrepit that eventhe space since she began to decay must have exceeded the ordinaryterm of human existence. In the spot where they encountered no mortalcould observe them. Three little hills stood near each other, and downin the midst of them sunk a hollow basin almost mathematicallycircular, two or three hundred feet in breadth and of such depth thata stately cedar might but just be visible above the sides. Dwarf pineswere numerous upon the hills and partly fringed the outer verge of theintermediate hollow, within which there was nothing but the browngrass of October and here and there a tree-trunk that had fallen longago and lay mouldering with no green successor from its roots. One ofthese masses of decaying wood, formerly a majestic oak, rested closebeside a pool of green and sluggish water at the bottom of the basin.Such scenes as this (so gray tradition tells) were once the resort ofa power of evil and his plighted subjects, and here at midnight or onthe dim verge of evening they were said to stand round the mantlingpool disturbing its putrid waters in the performance of an impiousbaptismal rite. The chill beauty of an autumnal sunset was now gildingthe three hill-tops, whence a paler tint stole down their sides intothe hollow.
"Here is our pleasant meeting come to pass," said the aged crone,"according as thou hast desired. Say quickly what thou wouldst have ofme, for there is but a short hour that we may tarry here."
As the old withered woman spoke a smile glimmered on her countenancelike lamplight on the wall of a sepulchre. The lady trembled and casther eyes upward to the verge of the basin, as if meditating to returnwith her purpose unaccomplished. But it was not so ordained.
"I am stranger in this land, as you know," said she, at length."Whence I come it matters not, but I have left those behind me withwhom my fate was intimately bound, and from whom I am cut off forever. There is a weight in my bosom that I cannot away with, and Ihave come hither to inquire of their welfare."
"And who is there by this green pool that can bring thee news from theends of the earth?" cried the old woman, peering into the lady's face."Not from my lips mayst thou hear these tidings; yet be thou bold, andthe daylight shall not pass away from yonder hilltop before thy wishbe granted."
"I will do your bidding though I die," replied the lady, desperately.
The old woman seated herself on the trunk of the fallen tree, threwaside the hood that shrouded her gray locks and beckoned her companionto draw near.
"Kneel down," she said, "and lay your forehead on my knees."
She hesitated a moment, but the anxiety that had long been kindlingburned fiercely up within her. As she knelt down the border of hergarment was dipped into the pool; she laid her forehead on the oldwoman's knees, and the latter drew a cloak about the lady's face, sothat she was in darkness. Then she heard the muttered words of prayer,in the midst of which she started and would have arisen.
"Let me flee! Let me flee and hide myself, that they may not look uponme!" she cried. But, with returning recollection, she hushed herselfand was still as death, for it seemed as if other voices, familiar ininfancy and unforgotten through many wanderings and in all thevicissitudes of her heart and fortune, were mingling with the accentsof the prayer. At first the words were faint and indistinct--notrendered so by distance, but rather resembling the dim pages of a bookwhich we strive to read by an imperfect and gradually brighteninglight. In such a manner, as the prayer proceeded, did those voicesstrengthen upon the ear, till at length the petition ended, and theconversation of an aged man and of a woman broken and decayed likehimself became distinctly audible to the lady as she knelt. But thosestrangers appeared not to stand in the hollow depth between the threehills. Their voices were encompassed and re-echoed by the walls of achamber the windows of which were rattling in the breeze; the regularvibration of a clock, the crackling of a fire and the tinkling of theembers as they fell among the ashes rendered the scene almost as vividas if painted to the eye. By a melancholy hearth sat these two oldpeople, the man calmly despondent, the woman querulous and tearful,and their words were all of sorrow. They spoke of a daughter, awanderer they knew not where, bearing dishonor along with her andleaving shame and affliction to bring their gray heads to the grave.They alluded also to other and more recent woe, but in the midst oftheir talk their voices seemed to melt into the sound of the windsweeping mournfully among the autumn leaves; and when the lady liftedher eyes, there was she kneeling in the hollow between three hills.
"A weary and lonesome time yonder old couple have of it," remarked theold woman, smiling in the lady's face.
"And did you also hear them?" exclaimed she, a sense of intolerablehumiliation triumphing over her agony and fear.
"Yea, and we have yet more to hear," replied the old woman, "whereforecover thy face quickly."
Again the withered hag poured forth the monotonous words of a prayerthat was not meant to be acceptable in heaven, and soon in the pausesof her breath strange murmurings began to thicken, graduallyincreasing, so as to drown and overpower the charm by which they grew.Shrieks pierced through the obscurity of sound and were succeeded bythe singing of sweet female voices, which in their turn gave way to awild roar of laughter broken suddenly by groanings and sobs, formingaltogether a ghastly confusion of terror and mourning and mirth.Chains were rattling, fierce and stern voices uttered threats and thescourge resounded at their command. All these noises deepened andbecame substantial to the listener's ear, till she could distinguishevery soft and dreamy accent of the love-songs that died causelesslyinto funeral-hymns. She shuddered at the unprovoked wrath which blazedup like the spontaneous kindling of flume, and she grew faint at thefearful merriment raging miserably around her. In the midst of thiswild scene, where unbound passions jostled each other in a drunkencareer, there was one solemn voice of a man, and a manly and melodiousvoice it might once have been. He went to and fro continually, and hisfeet sounded upon the floor. In each member of that frenzied companywhose own burning thoughts had become their exclusive world he soughtan auditor for the story of his individual wrong, and interpretedtheir laughter and tears as his reward of scorn or pity. He spoke ofwoman's perfidy, of a wife who had broken her holiest vows, of a homeand heart made desolate. Even as he went on, the shout, the laugh, theshriek, the sob, rose up in unison, till they changed into the hollow,fitful and uneven sound of the wind as it fought among the pine treeson those three lonely hills.
The lady looked up, and there was the withered woman smiling in herface.
"Couldst thou have thought there were such merry times in amad-house?" inquired the latter.
"True, true!" said the lady to herself; "there is mirth within itswalls, but misery, misery without."
"Wouldst thou hear more?" demanded the old woman.
"There is one other voice I would fain listen to again," replied thelady, faintly.
"Then lay down thy head speedily upon my knees, that thou mayst getthee hence before the hour be past."
The golden skirts of day were yet lingering upon the hills, but deepshades obscured the hollow and the pool, as if sombre night worerising thence to overspread the world. Again that evil woman began toweave her spell. Long did it proceed unanswered, till the knolling ofa bell stole in among the intervals of her words like a clang that hadtravelled far over valley and rising ground and was just ready to diein the air. The lady shook upon her companion's knees as she heardthat boding sound. Stronger it grew, and sadder, and deepened into thetone of a death-bell, knolling dolefully from some ivy-mantled towerand bearing tidings of mortality and woe to the cottage, to the halland to the solitary wayfarer, that all might weep for the dooma
ppointed in turn to them. Then came a measured tread, passing slowly,slowly on, as of mourners with a coffin, their garments trailing onthe ground, so that the ear could measure the length of theirmelancholy array. Before them went the priest, reading theburial-service, while the leaves of his book were rustling in thebreeze. And though no voice but his was heard to speak aloud, stillthere were revilings and anathemas, whispered but distinct, from womenand from men, breathed against the daughter who had wrung the agedhearts of her parents, the wife who had betrayed the trusting fondnessof her husband, the mother who had sinned against natural affectionand left her child to die. The sweeping sound of the funeral trainfaded away like a thin vapor, and the wind, that just before hadseemed to shake the coffin-pall, moaned sadly round the verge of thehollow between three hills. But when the old woman stirred thekneeling lady, she lifted not her head.
"Here has been a sweet hour's sport!" said the withered crone,chuckling to herself.