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 notice had no name that his companions knew of , and was chiefly distinguished by a sneer that always contorted his thin visage , and by a prodigious pair of spectacles which were supposed to deform and discolor the whole face of nature to this gentleman 's perception . The fifth adventurer likewise lacked a name , which was the greater pity , as he appeared to be a poet . He was a bright-eyed man , but woefully pined away , which was no more than 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 when the famous Captain Smith visited these coasts , had seen it blazing far at sea , and had felt no rest in all the intervening years till now that he took up the search .
A third , being encamped on a hunting-expedition full forty miles south of the White Mountains , awoke at midnight and beheld the Great XXXXX gleaming like a meteor , so that the shadows of the trees fell backward from it .
Carbuncle Hannah Indians Massachusetts Vere first moonshine morning mummy sixth