eat Stone Face became one to him. When the toil of
the day was over, he would gaze at it for hours, until he began to
imagine that those vast features recognized him, and gave him a smile
of kindness and encouragement, responsive to his own look of
veneration. We must not take upon us to affirm that this was a mistake,
although the Face may have looked no more kindly at Ernest than at all
the world besides. But the secret was that the boy's tender and
confiding simplicity discerned what other people could not see; and
thus the love, which was meant for all, became his peculiar portion.

About this time there went a rumor throughout the valley, that the
great man, foretold from ages long ago, who was to bear a resemblance
to the Great Stone Face, had appeared at last. It seems that, many
years before, a young man had migrated from the valley and settled at a
distant seaport, where, after getting together a little money, he had
set up as a shopkeeper. His name--but 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 of
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
wea