ed
away a block of stone which obstructed the mouth of the fissure. To his
amazement, its removal presented to his gaze a deep hole, in which a
vase of considerable size was buried. He removed the lid, and there,
fresh and bright, as if they were coins of yesterday, glittered before
his eyes a multitude of golden pieces, mingled with shining particles of
ore. A buried treasure of long past ages was before him. He took them in
his hands, he clutched them, he stared at them with half-insane
delight. He could not, of course, divine how they had come to be in
their strange hiding-place, or who had placed them there; the
inscriptions on them--the figure of a lamb, which some few bore--said
nothing to him. There appeared to be something supernatural in the
discovery, and he wasted all the remaining hours of daylight beside the
vase; then, as night closed in, he replaced both the lid and the stone
above the treasure. He did not attempt to remove it to his own dwelling,
nor did he breathe a word of his discovery even to his wife; but from
that hour he became an altered man.

The love of gold is an absorbing passion, especially when thus embodied
and materialized. He lived only beside his treasure; thither he bent his
steps daily, nor left it till the gloom of evening hid the object of his
idolatry from his eager gaze. His hunter's craft was neglected; his
family pined for food; he himself grew gaunt and thin, anxious and
suspicious; ever dreading that his secret might be discovered; restless
and miserable except when beside his wealth, where want, and hunger, and
the sad, suffering faces of those he had once loved, were all forgotten.
Only when the gathering darkness drove him from his hoard did he think
of using his fowling-piece, and scanty was the provision thus obtained.
In order fully and perfectly to contemplate his gold, it was necessary
for him to stretch himself at full length before the entrance to the
little hollow; his head and shoulders to the waist being thus within the
cave, immediately over the vase, his body and legs outside. The cliff
above the opening was nearly perpendicular, and had been much split and
shaken by the frosts since an avalanche had deprived it of its crown of
snow; but of his danger he was heedless or unconscious. One morning
while lying prone, repeating for the fiftieth time his daily counting of
the old coins, a portion of the rock detached itself slowly, and falling
on his waist, pinned him