But, in his disordered fancy,
the idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under
certain conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization. I lack words
to express the full extent, or the earnest abandon of his
persuasion. The belief, however, was connected (as I have previously
hinted) with the gray stones of the home of his forefathers. The
conditions of the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in
the method of collocation of these stones --in the order of their
arrangement, as well as in that of the many fungi which overspread
them, and of the decayed trees which stood around --above all, in
the long undisturbed endurance of this arrangement, and in its
reduplication in the still waters of the tarn. Its evidence --the
evidence of the sentience --was to be seen, he said, (and I here
started as he spoke,) in the gradual yet certain condensation of an
atmosphere of their own about the waters and the walls. The result was
discoverable, he added, in that silent, yet importunate and terrible
influence which for centuries had moulded the destinies of his family,
and which made him what I now saw him --what he was.
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