of the solid rock. A ray of glory flashed across its
surface. The pilgrims looked whence it should proceed, but closed
their eyes, with a thrill of awful admiration, to exclude the fervid
splendor that glowed from the brow of a cliff impending over the
enchanted lake.

For the simple pair had reached that lake of mystery and found the
long-sought shrine of the Great Carbuncle. They threw their arms
around each other and trembled at their own success, for as the
legends of this wondrous gem rushed thick upon their memory they felt
themselves marked out by fate, and the consciousness was fearful.
Often from childhood upward they had seen it shining like a distant
star, and now that star was throwing its intensest lustre on their
hearts. They seemed changed to one another's eyes in the red
brilliancy that flamed upon their cheeks, while it lent the same fire
to the lake, the rocks and sky, and to the mists which had rolled back
before its power. But with their next glance they beheld an object
that drew their attention even from the mighty stone. At the base of
the cliff, directly beneath the Great Carbuncle, appeared the figure
of a man with his arms extended in the act of climbing and his face
turned upward as if to drink the full gush of splendor. But he stirred
not, no more than if changed to marble.

"It is the Seeker," whispered Hannah, convulsively grasping her
husband's arm. "Matthew, he is dead."

"The joy of success has killed him," replied Matthew, trembling
violently. "Or perhaps the very light of the Great Carbuncle was
death."

"'The Great Carbuncle'!" cried a peevish voice behind them. "The great
humbug! If you have found it, prithee point it out to me."

They turned their heads, and there was the cynic with his prodigious
spectacles set carefully on his nose, staring now at the lake, now at
the rocks, now at the distant masses of vapor, now right at the Great
Carbuncle itself, yet seemingly as unconscious of its light as if all
the scattered clouds were condensed about his person. Though its
radiance actually threw the shadow of the unbeliever at his own feet
as he turned his back upon the glorious jewel, he would not be
convinced that there was the least glimmer there.

"Where is your great humbug?" he repeated. "I challenge you to make me
see it."

"There!" said Matthew, incensed at such perverse blindness, and
turning the cynic round toward the illuminated cliff. "Take off those
abominable spe