as they hasten onward , laughing in the angry face of nature , a sudden catastrophe has chanced . At the corner where the narrow lane enters into the street they come plump against the old merchant , whose tortoise-motion has just brought him to that point . He likes not the sweet encounter ; the darkness of the whole air gathers speedily upon his visage , and there is a pause on both sides . Finally he thrusts aside the youth with little courtesy , seizes an arm of each of the two girls , and plods onward like a magician with a prize of captive fairies . All this is easy to be understood . How disconsolate the poor lover stands , regardless of the rain that threatens an exceeding damage to his well-fashioned habiliments , till he catches a backward glance of mirth from a bright eye , and turns away with whatever comfort it conveys ! The old man and his daughters are safely housed , and now the storm lets loose its fury . In every dwelling I perceive the faces of the chambermaids as they shut down the windows , excluding the impetuous shower and shrinking away from the quick fiery glare . The large drops descend with force upon the slated roofs and rise again in smoke . There is a rush and roar as of a river through the air , and muddy streams bubble majestically along the pavement , whirl their dusky foam into the kennel , and disappear beneath iron grates . Thus did Arethusa sink . I love not my station here aloft in the midst of the tumult which I am powerless to direct or quell , with the blue lightning wrinkling on my brow and the thunder muttering its first awful syllables in my ear . I will descend . Yet let me give another glance to the sea , where the foam breaks out in long white lines upon a broad expanse of blackness or boils up in far-distant points like snowy mountain-tops in the eddies of a flood ; and let me look once more at the green plain and little hills of the country , over which the giant of the storm is striding in robes of mist , and at the town whose obscured and desolate streets might beseem a city of the dead ; and , turning a single moment to the sky , now gloomy as an author 's prospects , I prepare to resume my station on lower earth . But stay ! A little speck of azure has widened in the western heavens ; the sunbeams find a passage and go rejoicing through the tempest , and on yonder darkest cloud , born like hallowed hopes of the glory of another world and the trouble and tears of this , brightens forth the rainbow . THE HOLLOW OF THE THREE HILLS . In those strange old times when fantastic dreams and madmen 's reveries were realized among the actual circumstances of life , two persons met together at an appointed hour and place . One was a lady graceful in form and fair of feature , though pale and troubled and smitten with an untimely blight in what should have been the fullest bloom of her years ; the other was an ancient and meanly-dressed woman of ill-favored aspect , and so withered , shrunken and decrepit that even the space since she began to decay must have exceeded the ordinary term of human existence . In the spot where they encountered no mortal could observe them .
Three little hills stood near each other , and down in the midst of them sunk a hollow basin almost mathematically circular , two or three hundred feet XXXXX breadth and of such depth that a stately cedar might but just be visible above the sides .
At among from in on since that through upon with