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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: 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 in breadth, and of such depth that a
stately cedar might but just be visible above the sides. Dwarf
pines were numerous upon the hills, and partly fringed the outer
verge of the intermediate hollow, within which there was nothing
but the brown grass of October, and here and there a tree trunk
that had fallen long ago, and lay mouldering with no green
successsor from its roots. One of these masses of decaying wood,
 Twice Told Tales |