and unlovely as to shame even the hideous
ruins left by dynamite, hydraulic, or pick and shovel; an overflown and
forgotten woodland torrent will leave in some remote hollow a disturbed
and ungraceful chaos of inextricable logs, branches, rock, and soil that
will rival the unsavory details of some wrecked or abandoned settlement.
Of lesser magnitude and importance, there are certain natural
dust-heaps, sinks, and cesspools, where the elements have collected the
cast-off, broken, and frayed disjecta of wood and field--the sweepings
of the sylvan household. It was remarkable that Nature, so kindly
considerate of mere human ruins, made no attempt to cover up or disguise
these monuments of her own mortality: no grass grew over the unsightly
landslides, no moss or ivy clothed the stripped and bleached skeletons
of overthrown branch and tree; the dead leaves and withered husks rotted
in their open grave uncrossed by vine and creeper. Even the animals,
except the lower organizations, shunned those haunts of decay and ruin.

It was scarcely a hundred yards from one of those dreary receptacles
that Mr. Bradley had taken leave of Miss Minty Sharpe. The cabin
occupied by her father, herself, and a younger brother stood, in fact,
on the very edge of the little hollow, which was partly filled with
decayed wood, leaves, and displacements of the crumbling bank, with
the coal dust and ashes which Mr. Sharpe had added from his forge, that
stood a few paces distant at the corner of a cross-road. The occupants
of the cabin had also contributed to the hollow the refuse of their
household in broken boxes, earthenware, tin cans, and cast-off clothing;
and it is not improbable that the site of the cabin was chosen with
reference to this convenient disposal of useless and encumbering
impedimenta. It was true that the locality offered little choice in
the way of beauty. An outcrop of brown granite--a portent of higher
altitudes--extended a quarter of a mile from the nearest fringe of dwarf
laurel and "brush" in one direction; in the other an advanced file of
Bradley's woods had suffered from some long-forgotten fire, and still
raised its blackened masts and broken stumps over the scorched and arid
soil, swept of older underbrush and verdure. On the other side of the
road a dark ravine, tangled with briers and haunted at night by owls and
wild cats, struggled wearily on, until blundering at last upon the edge
of the Great Canyon, it slipped and l