They spread their individual supplies of food on the flat surface of a rock and partook of a general repast ; at the close of which a sentiment of good-fellowship was perceptible among the party , though repressed by the idea that the renewed search for the Great Carbuncle must make them strangers again in the morning . Seven men and one young woman , they warmed themselves together at the fire , which extended its bright wall along the whole front of their wigwam . As they observed the various and contrasted figures that made up the assemblage , each man looking like a caricature of himself in the unsteady light that flickered over him , they came mutually to the conclusion that an odder society had never met in city or wilderness , on mountain or plain . The eldest of the group -- a tall , lean , weatherbeaten man some sixty years of age -- was clad in the skins of wild animals whose fashion of dress he did well to imitate , since the deer , the wolf and the bear had long been his most intimate companions . 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 XXXXX 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 .
As Near after by in into of over while within