in amazement. "I am a new-comer here, as you say, and they call
it eighteen years since you left the foot of Graylock. But, I can
tell you, the good folks still talk about Ethan Brand, in the
village yonder, and what a strange errand took him away from his
lime-kiln. Well, and so you have found the Unpardonable Sin?"

"Even so!" said the stranger, calmly.

"If the question is a fair one," proceeded Bartram, "where might
it be?"

Ethan Brand laid his finger on his own heart.

"Here!" replied he.

And then, without mirth in his countenance, but as if moved by an
involuntary recognition of the infinite absurdity of seeking
throughout the world for what was the closest of all things to
himself, and looking into every heart, save his own, for what was
hidden in no other breast, he broke into a laugh of scorn. It was
the same slow, heavy laugh, that had almost appalled the
lime-burner when it heralded the wayfarer's approach.

The solitary mountain-side was made dismal by it. Laughter, when
out of place, mistimed, or bursting forth from a disordered state
of feeling, may be the most terrible modulation of the human
voice. The laughter of one asleep, even if it be a little
child,--the madman's laugh,--the wild, screaming laugh of a born
idiot,--are sounds that we sometimes tremble to hear, and would
always willingly forget. Poets have imagined no utterance of