rsonage 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 farm-house. 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 accustomed to build of snow. It had a richly
ornamented portico, supported by tall pillars, beneath which was a lofty
door, studded with silver knobs, and made of a kind of variegated wood
that had been brought from beyond the sea. The windows, from the floor
to the ceiling of each stately apartment, were composed, respectively,
of but one enormous pane of glass, so transparently pure that it was
said to be a finer medium than even the vacant atmosphere. Hardly
anybody had been permitted to see the interior of this palace; but it
was reported, and with good semblance of truth, to be far more gorgeous
than the outside, insomuch that whatever was iron or brass in other
houses was silver or gold in this; and Mr. Gathergold's bedchamber,
especially, made such a glittering appearance that no ordinary man would
have been able to close his eyes there. But, on the other hand, Mr.
Gathergold was now so inured to wealth, that perhaps he could not have
closed his eyes unless where the gleam of it was certain to find its way
beneath his eyelids.

In due time, the mansion was finished; next came the upholsterers with
magnificent furniture; then, a whole troop of black and white servants,
the harbingers of Mr. Gathergold, who, in his own majestic person, was
expected to arrive at sunset. Our friend Ernest, meanwhile, had been
deeply stirred by the idea that the great man, the noble man, the man of
prophecy, after so many ages of delay, was at length to be made manifest
to his native valley. He knew, boy as he was, that there were a thousand
ways in which Mr. Gathergold, with his vast wealth, might transform
himself into an angel of beneficence, and assume a control over human
affairs as wide and benignant as the smile of the Great Stone Face. Full
of faith and hope, Ernest doubted not that what the people said was
true, and that now he was to behol