imperceptible degrees, he had become known among the people. Now,
as heretofore, he labored 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
neighbor. 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 neighbor 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