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.
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