they came mutually to the conclusion that an odder society had never
met in city or wilderness, on mountain or plain.

The eldest of the group--a tall, lean, weatherbeaten man some sixty
years of age--was clad in the skins of wild animals whose fashion of
dress he did well to imitate, since the deer, the wolf and the bear
had long been his most intimate companions. He was one of those
ill-fated mortals, such as the Indians told of, whom in their early
youth the Great Carbuncle smote with a peculiar madness and became the
passionate dream of their existence. All who visited that region knew
him as "the Seeker," and by no other name. As none could remember when
he first took up the search, there went a fable in the valley of the
Saco that for his inordinate lust after the Great Carbuncle he had
been condemned to wander among the mountains till the end of time,
still with the same feverish hopes at sunrise, the same despair at
eve. Near this miserable Seeker sat a little elderly personage wearing
a high-crowned hat shaped somewhat like a crucible. He was from beyond
the sea--a Doctor Cacaphodel, who had wilted and dried himself into a
mummy by continually stooping over charcoal-furnaces and inhaling
unwholesome fumes during his researches in chemistry and alchemy. It
was told of him--whether truly or not--that at the commencement of his
studies he had drained his body of all its richest blood and wasted
it, with other inestimable ingredients, in an unsuccessful experiment,
and had never been a well man since. Another of the adventurers was
Master Ichabod Pigsnort, a weighty merchant and selectman of Boston,
and an elder of the famous Mr. Norton's church. His enemies had a
ridiculous story that Master Pigsnort was accustomed to spend a whole
hour after prayer-time every morning and evening in wallowing naked
among an immense quantity of pine-tree shillings, which were the
earliest silver coinage of Massachusetts. The fourth whom we shall