been received into the cottage on this awful night, and had shared the
catastrophe of all its inmates. Others denied that there were sufficient
grounds for such a conjecture. Woe for the high-souled youth, with his
dream of Earthly Immortality! His name and person utterly unknown; his
history, his way of life, his plans, a mystery never to be solved, his
death and his existence equally a doubt! Whose was the agony of that
death moment?




THE GREAT CARBUNCLE

A MYSTERY OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS

(The Indian tradition, on which this somewhat extravagant tale is
founded, is both too wild and too beautiful to be adequately wrought
up in prose. Sullivan, in his History of Maine, written since the
Revolution, remarks, that even then the existence of the Great Carbuncle
was not entirely discredited.)

AT nightfall, once in the olden time, on the rugged side of one of the
Crystal Hills, a party of adventurers were refreshing themselves, after
a toilsome and fruitless quest for the Great Carbuncle. They had come
thither, not as friends nor partners in the enterprise, but each, save
one youthful pair, impelled by his own selfish and solitary longing for
this wondrous gem. Their feeling of brotherhood, however, was strong
enough to induce them to contribute a mutual aid in building a rude
hut of branches, and kindling a great fire of shattered pines, that had
drifted down the headlong current of the Amonoosuck, on the lower bank