as if his own Midas-hand had
transmuted it. He had a low forehead, small, sharp eyes, puckered about
with innumerable wrinkles, and very thin lips, which he made still
thinner by pressing them forcibly together.

'The very image or the Great Stone Face!' shouted the people. 'Sure
enough, the old prophecy is true; and here we have the great man come,
at last!'

And, what greatly perplexed Ernest, they seemed actually to believe that
here was the likeness which they spoke of. By the roadside there chanced
to be an old beggar woman and two little beggar-children, stragglers
from some far-off region, who, as the carriage rolled onward, held
out their hands and lifted up their doleful voices, most piteously
beseeching charity. A yellow claw the very same that had dawed together
so much wealth--poked itself out of the coach-window, and dropt some
copper coins upon the ground; so that, though the great man's name seems
to have been Gathergold, he might just as suitably have been nicknamed
Scattercopper. Still, nevertheless, with an earnest shout, and evidently
with as much good faith as ever, the people bellowed 'He is the very
image of the Great Stone Face!' But Ernest turned sadly from the
wrinkled shrewdness of that sordid visage, and gazed up the valley,
where, amid a gathering mist, gilded by the last sunbeams, he could
still distinguish those glorious features which had impressed themselves
into his soul. Their aspect cheered him. What did the benign lips seem
to say?

'He will come! Fear not, Ernest; the man will come!'

The years went on, and Ernest ceased to be a boy. He had grown to be a
young man now. He attracted little notice from the other inhabitants
of the valley; for they saw nothing remarkable in his way of life, save
that, when the labor of the day was over, he still loved to go apart and
gaze and meditate upon the Great Stone Face. According to their idea of
the matter, it was a folly, indeed, but pardonable, inasmuch as Ernest
was industrious, kind, and neighborly, and neglected no duty for the
sake of indulging this idle habit. They knew not that the Great Stone
Face had become a teacher to him, and that the sentiment which was
expressed in it would enlarge the young man's heart, and fill it with
wider and deeper sympathies than other hearts. They knew not that thence
would come a better wisdom than could be learned from books, and a
better life than could be moulded on the defaced example of other hu