THE Hermit lived in a cave in the hollow of a hill. Below him was a glen, with a stream in a coppice of oaks and alders, and on the farther side of the valley, half a day's journey distant, another hill, steep and bristling, which raised aloft a little walled town with Ghibelline swallow-tails notched against the sky.
When the Hermit was a lad, and lived in the town, the crenellations of the walls had been square-topped, and a Guelf lord had...
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