he will come."

More years sped swiftly and tranquilly away. Ernest still dwelt in his
native valley, and was now a man of middle age. By imperceptible
degrees, he had become known among the people. Now, as heretofore, he
laboured for his bread, and was the same simple-hearted man that he
had always been. But he had thought and felt so much he had given so
many of the best hours of his life to unworldly hopes for some great
good to mankind, that it seemed as though he had been talking with the
angels, and had imbibed a portion of their wisdom unawares. It was
visible in the calm and well-considered beneficence of his daily life,
the quiet stream of which had made a wide green margin all along its
course. Not a day passed by, that the world was not the better because
this man, humble as he was, had lived. He never stepped aside from his
own path, yet would always reach a blessing to his neighbour. Almost
involuntarily, too, he had become a preacher. The pure and high
simplicity of his thought, which, as one of its manifestations, took
shape in the good deeds that dropped silently from his hand, flowed
also forth in speech. He uttered truths that wrought upon and moulded
the lives of those who heard him. His auditors, it may be, never
suspected that Ernest, their own neighbour and familiar friend, was
more than an ordinary man; least of all did Ernest himself suspect it;
but, inevitably as the murmur of a rivulet, came thoughts out of his
mouth that no other human lips had spoken.

When the people's minds had had a little time to cool, they were ready
enough to acknowledge their mistake in imagining a similarity between
General Blood-and-Thunder's truculent physiognomy and the benign
visage on the mountain-side. But now, again, there were reports and
many paragraphs in the newspapers, affirming that the likeness of the
Great Stone Face had appeared upon the broad shoulders of a certain
eminent statesman. He, like Mr. Gathergold and Old Blood-and-Thunder,
was a native of the valley, but had left it in his early days, and
taken up the trades of law and politics. Instead of the rich man's
wealth and the warrior's sword, he had but a tongue, and it was
mightier than both together. So wonderfully eloquent was he, that
whatever he might choose to say, his auditors had no choice but to
believe him; wrong looked like right, and right like wrong; for when
it pleased him, he could make a kind of illuminated fog with his mere
bre