natural, if, as some people affirmed, his ordinary diet was fog, morning
mist, and a slice of the densest cloud within his reach, sauced with
moonshine, whenever he could get it. Certain it is, that the poetry
which flowed from him had a smack of all these dainties. The sixth of
the party was a young man of haughty mien, and sat somewhat apart from
the rest, wearing his plumed hat loftily among his elders, while the
fire glittered on the rich embroidery of his dress and gleamed intensely
on the jewelled pommel of his sword. This was the Lord de Vere, who,
when at home, was said to spend much of his time in the burial vault of
his dead progenitors, rummaging their mouldy coffins in search of all
the earthly pride and vainglory that was hidden among bones and dust;
so that, besides his own share, he had the collected haughtiness of his
whole line of ancestry.

Lastly, there was a handsome youth in rustic garb, and by his side a
blooming little person, in whom a delicate shade of maiden reserve was
just melting into the rich glow of a young wife's affection. Her name
was Hannah, and her husband's Matthew; two homely names, yet well enough
adapted to the simple pair, who seemed strangely out of place among
the whimsical fraternity whose wits had been set agog by the Great
Carbuncle.

Beneath the shelter of one hut, in the bright blaze of the same fire,
sat this varied group of adventurers, all so intent upon a single
object, that, of whatever else they began to speak, their closing words
were sure to be illuminated with the Great Carbuncle. Several related
the circumstances that brought them thither. One had listened to a
traveller's tale of this marvellous stone in his own distant country,
and had immediately been seized with such a thirst for beholding it as
could only, be quenched in its intensest lustre. Another, so long ago as