irregular shapes and heights, that, from the piazza, a nigher and lower
mountain will, in most states of the atmosphere, effacingly shade itself
away into a higher and further one; that an object, bleak on the
former's crest, will, for all that, appear nested in the latter's flank.
These mountains, somehow, they play at hide-and-seek, and all before
one's eyes.

But, be that as it may, the spot in question was, at all events, so
situated as to be only visible, and then but vaguely, under certain
witching conditions of light and shadow.

Indeed, for a year or more, I knew not there was such a spot, and might,
perhaps, have never known, had it not been for a wizard afternoon in
autumn--late in autumn--a mad poet's afternoon; when the turned maple
woods in the broad basin below me, having lost their first vermilion
tint, dully smoked, like smouldering towns, when flames expire upon
their prey; and rumor had it, that this smokiness in the general air was
not all Indian summer--which was not used to be so sick a thing, however
mild--but, in great part, was blown from far-off forests, for weeks on
fire, in Vermont; so that no wonder the sky was ominous as Hecate's
cauldron--and two sportsmen, crossing a red stubble buck-wheat field,
seemed guilty Macbeth and foreboding Banquo; and the hermit-sun, hutted
in an Adullum cave, well towards the south, according to his season, did
little else but, by indirect reflection of narrow rays shot down a
Simplon pass among the clouds, just steadily paint one small, round,
strawberry mole upon the wan cheek of northwestern hills. Signal as a
candle. One spot of radiance, where all else was shade.

Fairies there, thought I; some haunted ring where fairies dance.