I could never learn whether it was
his real one, or a nickname that had grown out of his habits and success
in life--was Gathergold.

Being shrewd and active, and endowed by Providence with that inscrutable
faculty which develops itself in what the world calls luck, he became an
exceedingly rich merchant, and owner of a whole fleet of bulky-bottomed
ships. All the countries of the globe appeared to join hands for the
mere purpose of adding heap after heap to the mountainous accumulation
of this one man's wealth. The cold regions of the north, almost within
the gloom and shadow of the Arctic Circle, sent him their tribute in the
shape of furs; hot Africa sifted for him the golden sands of her rivers,
and gathered up the ivory tusks of her great elephants out of the
forests; the east came bringing him the rich shawls, and spices, and
teas, and the effulgence of diamonds, and the gleaming purity of large
pearls. The ocean, not to be behindhand with the earth, yielded up her
mighty whales, that Mr. Gathergold might sell their oil, and make a
profit on it. Be the original commodity what it might, it was gold
within his grasp. It might be said of him, as of Midas, in the fable,
that whatever he touched with his finger immediately glistened, and grew
yellow, and was changed at once into sterling metal, or, which suited
him still better, into piles of coin. And, when Mr. Gathergold had
become so very rich that it would have taken him a hundred years only
to count his wealth, he bethought himself of his native valley, and
resolved to go back thither, and end his days where he was born. With
this purpose in view, he sent a skilful architect to build him such a
palace as should be fit for a man of his vast wealth to live in.

As I have said above, it had already been rumored in the valley that
Mr. Gathergold had turned out to be the prophetic personage so long and
vainly looked for, and that his visage was the perfect and undeniable
similitude of the Great Stone Face. People were the more ready to
believe that this must needs be the fact, when they beheld the splendid
edifice that rose, as if by enchantment, on the site of his father's
old weather-beaten farmhouse. The exterior was of marble, so dazzlingly
white that it seemed as though the whole structure might melt away in
the sunshine, like those humbler ones which Mr. Gathergold, in his
young play-days, before his fingers were gifted with the touch of
transmutation, had been