shadow of the night, and was making himself at home in his old
place, after so long absence, that the dead people, dead and
buried for years, would have had more right to be at home, in any
familiar spot, than he. Ethan Brand, it was said, had conversed
with Satan himself in the lurid blaze of this very kiln. The
legend had been matter of mirth heretofore, but looked grisly
now. According to this tale, before Ethan Brand departed on his
search, he had been accustomed to evoke a fiend from the hot
furnace of the lime-kiln, night after night, in order to confer
with him about the Unpardonable Sin; the man and the fiend each
laboring to frame the image of some mode of guilt which could
neither be atoned for nor forgiven. And, with the first gleam of
light upon the mountain-top, the fiend crept in at the iron door,
there to abide the intensest element of fire until again summoned
forth to share in the dreadful task of extending man's possible
guilt beyond the scope of Heaven's else infinite mercy.

While the lime-burner was struggling with the horror of these
thoughts, Ethan Brand rose from the log, and flung open the door
of the kiln. The action was in such accordance with the idea in
Bartram's mind, that he almost expected to see the Evil One issue
forth, red-hot, from the raging furnace.

"Hold! hold!" cried he, with a tremulous attempt to laugh; for he
was ashamed of his fears, although they overmastered him. "Don't,
for mercy's sake, bring out your Devil now!"

"Man!" sternly replied Ethan Brand, "what need have I of the
Devil? I have left him behind me, on my track. It is with such
half-way sinners as you that he busies himself. Fear not, because