The Hermit and the Wild Woman and other stories

Published: 1908

Short story collection including: The Hermit and the Wild Woman, The Last Asset, In Trust, The Pretext, The Verdict, The Pot-Boiler, and The Best Man. According to Wikipedia: "Edith Wharton was an American novelist, short story writer, and designer. ... The Age of Innocence (1920), perhaps her best known work, won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for literature, making her the first woman to win the award." 

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 flown his standard from the keep.