The Man of Adamant

From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales"

In the old times of religious gloom and intolerance lived Richard Digby,
the gloomiest and most intolerant of a stern brotherhood. His plan of
salvation was so narrow, that, like a plank in a tempestuous sea, it
could avail no sinner but himself, who bestrode it triumphantly, and
hurled anathemas against the wretches whom he saw struggling with the
billows of eternal death. In his view of the matter, it was a most
abominable crime--as, indeed, it is a great folly--for men to trust to
their own strength, or even to grapple to any other fragment of the
wreck, save this narrow plank, which, moreover, he took special care to
keep out of their reach. In other words, as his creed was like no man's
else, and being well pleased that Providence had intrusted him alone, of
mortals, with the treasure of a true faith, Richard Digby determined to
seclude himself to the sole and constant enjoyment of his happy fortune.

"And verily," thought he, "I deem it a chief condition of Heaven's mercy
to myself, that I hold no communion with those abominable myriads which
it hath cast off to perish. Peradventure, were I to tarry longer in the
tents of Kedar, the gracious boon would be revoked, and I also be
swallowed up in the deluge of wrath, or consumed in the storm of fire and
brimstone, or involved in whatever new kind of ruin is ordained for the
horrible perversity of this generation."

So Richard Digby took an axe, to hew space enough for a tabernacle in the
wilderness, and some few other necessaries, especially a sword and gun,
to smite and slay any intruder upon his hallowed seclusion; and plunged
into the dreariest depths of the forest. On its verge, however, he
paused a moment, to shake off the dust of his feet against the village
where he had dwelt, and to invoke a curse on the meeting-house, which he
regarded as a temple of heathen idolatry. He felt a curiosity, also, to
see whether the fire and brimstone would not rush down from Heaven at
once, now that the one righteous man had provided for his own safety.
But, as the sunshine continued to fall peacefully on the cottages and
fields, and the husbandmen labored and children played, and as there were
many tokens of present happiness, and nothing ominous of a speedy
judgment, he turned away, somewhat disappointed. The farther he went,
however, and the lonelier he felt himself, and the thicker the trees
stood along his path, and the darker the shadow overhead, so much the
more did Richard Digby exult. He talked to himself, as he strode onward;
he read his Bible to himself, as he sat beneath the trees; and, as the
gloom of the forest hid the blessed sky, I had almost added, that, at