“That have I, thou sordid man!” exclaimed the poet.  “Dost thou desire nothing brighter than gold, that thou wouldst transmute all this ethereal lustre into such dross as thou wallowest in already?  For myself, hiding the jewel under my cloak, I shall hie me back to my attic-chamber in one of the darksome alleys of London.  There night and day will I gaze upon it.  My soul shall drink its radiance; it shall be diffused throughout my intellectual powers and gleam brightly in every line of poesy that I indite.  Thus long ages after I am gone the splendor of the Great Carbuncle will blaze around my name.”

“Well said, Master Poet!” cried he of the spectacles.  “Hide it under thy cloak, sayest thou?  Why, it will gleam through the holes and make thee look like a jack-o’-lantern!”

“To think,” ejaculated the lord De Vere, rather to himself than his companions, the best of whom he held utterly unworthy of his intercourse—­“to think that a fellow in a tattered cloak should talk of conveying the Great Carbuncle to a garret in Grubb street!  Have not I resolved within myself that the whole earth contains no fitter ornament for the great hall of my ancestral castle?  There shall it flame for ages, making a noonday of midnight, glittering on the suits of armor, the banners and escutcheons, that hang around the wall, and keeping bright the memory of heroes.  Wherefore have all other adventurers sought the prize in vain but that I might win it and make it a symbol of the glories of our lofty line?  And never on the diadem of the White Mountains did the Great Carbuncle hold a place half so honored as is reserved for it in the hall of the De Veres.”

“It is a noble thought,” said the cynic, with an obsequious sneer.  “Yet, might I presume to say so, the gem would make a rare sepulchral lamp, and would display the glories of Your Lordship’s progenitors more truly in the ancestral vault than in the castle-hall.”

“Nay, forsooth,” observed Matthew, the young rustic, who sat hand in hand with his bride, “the gentleman has bethought himself of a profitable use for this bright stone.  Hannah here and I are seeking it for a like purpose.”

“How, fellow?” exclaimed His Lordship, in surprise.  “What castle-hall hast thou to hang it in?”

“No castle,” replied Matthew, “but as neat a cottage as any within sight of the Crystal Hills.  Ye must know, friends, that Hannah and I, being wedded the last week, have taken up the search of the Great Carbuncle because we shall need its light in the long winter evenings and it will be such a pretty thing to show the neighbors when they visit us!  It will shine through the house, so that we may pick up a pin in any corner, and will set all the windows a-glowing as if there were a great fire of pine-knots in the chimney.  And then how pleasant, when we awake in the night, to be able to see one another’s faces!”