Page "mystery" Paragraph 1078

We'll walk up there later.

It's perhaps a mile from here where we sit.

And not one single dwelling left there, though once, in the early eighteenth century, there were close to a hundred houses.

( I myself have identified about sixty sites, from the old maps and registers.

A fascinating pursuit, I assure you.

) Even I can remember nothing but ruined cellars and tumbled pillars, and nobody has lived there in the memory of any living man.

It is now a sweep of boulders and ledges, with oak, walnut and sumac creeping across the common, and everywhere the ruins and the long, long shadows.