It apparently has not been used for many years, and the lime and
weather-stained fragments of marble are scattered about.
But in the one we saw last night a hard-wood fire was burning merrily,
beneath the superincumbent marble,--the kiln being heaped full; and
shortly after we came, the man (a dark, black-bearded figure, in
shirt-sleeves) opened the iron door, through the chinks of which the fire
was gleaming, and thrust in huge logs of wood, and stirred the immense
coals with a long pole, and showed us the glowing limestone,--the lower
layer of it. The heat of the fire was powerful, at the distance of
several yards from the open door. He talked very sensibly with us, being
doubtless glad to have two visitors to vary his solitary night-watch; for
it would not do for him to fall asleep, since the fire should be
refreshed as often as every twenty minutes. We ascended the hillock to
the top of the kiln, and the marble was red-hot, and burning with a
bluish, lambent flame, quivering up, sometimes nearly a yard high, and
resembling the flame of anthracite coal, only, the marble being in large
fragments, the flame was higher.
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