of daylight. But scarcely was this accomplished, when the little group
uttered a simultaneous shriek, and tumbled headlong down the hill, making
the best of their way homeward, without a second glance into the gloomy
recess. Their father, unable to comprehend what had so startled them,
took his axe, and, by felling one or two trees, and tearing away the
creeping plants, laid the mystery open to the day. He had discovered the
entrance of a cave, closely resembling the mouth of a sepulchre, within
which sat the figure of a man, whose gesture and attitude warned the
father and children to stand back, while his visage wore a most
forbidding frown. This repulsive personage seemed to have been carved in
the same gray stone that formed the walls and portal of the cave. On
minuter inspection, indeed, such blemishes were observed, as made it
doubtful whether the figure were really a statue, chiselled by human art
and somewhat worn and defaced by the lapse of ages, or a freak of Nature,
who might have chosen to imitate, in stone, her usual handiwork of flesh.
Perhaps it was the least unreasonable idea, suggested by this strange
spectacle, that the moisture of the cave possessed a petrifying quality,
which had thus awfully embalmed a human corpse.

There was something so frightful in the aspect of this Man of Adamant,
that the farmer, the moment that he recovered from the fascination of his
first gaze, began to heap stones into the mouth of the cavern. His wife,
who had followed him to the hill, assisted her husband's efforts. The
children, also, approached as near as they durst, with their little hands
full of pebbles, and cast them on the pile. Earth was then thrown into
the crevices, and the whole fabric overlaid with sods. Thus all traces
of the discovery were obliterated, leaving only a marvellous legend,
which grew wilder from one generation to another, as the children told it
to their grandchildren, and they to their posterity, till few believed
that there had ever been a cavern or a statue, where now they saw but a