f Earthly Immortality! His name and person utterly unknown; his
history, his way of life, his plans, a mystery never to be solved, his
death and his existence equally a doubt! Whose was the agony of that
death moment?

THE GREAT CARBUNCLE

A MYSTERY OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS

(The Indian tradition, on which this somewhat extravagant tale is
founded, is both too wild and too beautiful to be adequately wrought
up in prose. Sullivan, in his History of Maine, written since the
Revolution, remarks, that even then the existence of the Great Carbuncle
was not entirely discredited.)

AT nightfall, once in the olden time, on the rugged side of one of the
Crystal Hills, a party of adventurers were refreshing themselves, after
a toilsome and fruitless quest for the Great Carbuncle. They had come
thither, not as friends nor partners in the enterprise, but each, save
one youthful pair, impelled by his own selfish and solitary longing for
this wondrous gem. Their feeling of brotherhood, however, was strong
enough to induce them to contribute a mutual aid in building a rude
hut of branches, and kindling a great fire of shattered pines, that had
drifted down the headlong current of the Amonoosuck, on the lower bank
of which they were to pass the night. There was but one of their number,
perhaps, who had become so estranged from natural sympathies, by the
absorbing spell of the pursuit, as to acknowledge no satisfaction at the
sight of human faces, in the remote and solitary region whither they had
ascended. A vast extent of wilderness lay between them and the nearest
settlement, while scant a mile above their heads was that black verge
where the hills throw off their shaggy mantle of forest trees, and
either robe themselves in clouds or tower naked into the sky. The roar
of the Amonoosuck would have been too awful for endurance if only a
solitary man had listened, while the mountain stream talked with the
wind.

The adventurers, therefore, exchanged hospitable greetings, and welcomed
one another to the hut, where each man was the host, and all were the
guests of the whole company. They spread their individual supplies of
food on the flat surface of a rock, and partook of a general repast; at
the close of which, a sentiment of good fellowship was perceptible among
the party, though repressed by the idea, that the renewed search for the
Great Carbuncle must make them strangers again in the morning. Seven men
and one young woman,