"Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Hollow of the Three Hills" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawthorne Nathaniel)

"And who is there by this green pool that can bring thee news
from the ends 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, and the daylight shall not pass away from yonder
hill-top before thy wish be 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, threw
aside the hood that shrouded her gray locks, and beckoned her
companion to draw near.

"Kneel down," she said, and lay your forehead on my knees."

She hesitated a moment, but the anxiety that had long been kindling
burned fiercely up within her. As she knelt down, the border of her
garment was dipped into the pool; she laid her forehead on the old
woman's knees, and the latter drew a cloak about the lady's face, so
that 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
upon me!" she cried. But, with returning recollection, she hushed
herself, and was still as death.

For it seemed as if other voices- familiar in infancy, and
unforgotten through many wanderings, and in all the vicissitudes of
her heart and fortune- were mingling with the accents of the prayer.
At first the words were faint and indistinct, not rendered so by
distance, but rather resembling the dim pages of a book which we
strive to read by an imperfect and gradually brightening light. In
such a manner, as the prayer proceeded, did those voices strengthen
upon the ear; till at length the petition ended, and the
conversation of an aged man, and of a woman broken and decayed like
himself, became distinctly audible to the lady as she knelt. But those
strangers appeared not to stand in the hollow depth between the
three hills. Their voices were encompassed and reechoed by the walls
of a chamber, the windows of which were rattling in the breeze; the
regular vibration of a clock, the crackling of a fire, and the
tinkling of the embers as they fell among the ashes, rendered the
scene almost as vivid as if painted to the eye. By a melancholy hearth
sat these two old people, the man calmly despondent, the woman
querulous and tearfull and their words were all of sorrow. They
spoke of a daughter, a wanderer they knew not where, bearing
dishonor along with her, and leaving shame and affliction to bring
their gray heads to the grave. They alluded also to other and more
recent wo, but in the midst of their talk their voices seemed to
melt into the sound of the wind sweeping mournfully among the autumn