. Gathergold, was close at hand, but the poet, with his carpetbag on
his arm, inquired at once where Ernest dwelt, and was resolved to be
accepted as his guest.

Approaching the door, he there found the good old man, holding a volume
in his hand, which he read, and then, with a finger between the leaves,
looked lovingly at the Great Stone Face.

"Good evening," said the poet. "Can you give a traveler a night's
lodging?"

"Willingly," answered Ernest. And then he added, smiling, "Methinks I
never saw the Great Stone Face look so hospitably at a stranger."

The poet sat down on the bench beside him, and he and Ernest talked
together. Often had the poet conversed with the wittiest and the wisest,
but never before with a man like Ernest, whose thoughts and feelings
gushed up with such a natural freedom, and who made great truths so
familiar by his simple utterance of them. Angels, as had been so often
said, seemed to have wrought with him at his labor in the fields; angels
seemed to have sat with him by the fireside. So thought the poet. And
Ernest, on the other hand, was moved by the living images which the poet
flung out of his mind, and which peopled all the air about the cottage
door with shapes of beauty.

As Ernest listened to the poet, he imagined that the Great Stone Face
was bending forward to listen, too. He gazed earnestly into the poet's
glowing eyes.

"Who are you, my strangely gifted guest!" he said.

The poet laid his finger on the volume that Ernest had been reading.

"You have read these poems," said he. "You know me, then,--for I wrote
them."

Again, and still more earnestly than before, Ernest examined the poet's
features; then turned toward the Great Stone Face; then back to his
guest. But his countenance fell; he shook his head, and mournfully
sighed.

"Wherefore are you sad?" inquired the poet.

"Because," replied Ernest, "all through life I have awaited the
fulfillment of a prophecy; and when I read these poems, I hoped that it
might be fulfilled in you."

"You hoped," answered the poet, faintly smiling, "to find in me the
likeness of the Great Stone Face. And you are disappointed, as formerly
with Mr. Gathergold, and Old Blood-and-Thunder, and Old Stony Phiz. Yes,
Ernest, it is my doom. You must add my name to the illustrious three,
and record another failure of your hopes. For--in shame and sadness do I
speak it, Ernest--I am not worthy."

"And why?" asked Ernest. He pointed to the