hardened,--had perished! It had ceased to partake of the
universal throb. He had lost his hold of the magnetic chain of
humanity. He was no longer a brother-man, opening the chambers or
the dungeons of our common nature by the key of holy sympathy,
which gave him a right to share in all its secrets; he was now a
cold observer, looking on mankind as the subject of his
experiment, and, at length, converting man and woman to be his
puppets, and pulling the wires that moved them to such degrees of
crime as were demanded for his study.

Thus Ethan Brand became a fiend. He began to be so from the
moment that his moral nature had ceased to keep the pace of
improvement with his intellect. And now, as his highest effort
and inevitable development,--as the bright and gorgeous flower,
and rich, delicious fruit of his life's labor,--he had produced
the Unpardonable Sin!

"What more have I to seek? what more to achieve?" said Ethan
Brand to himself. "My task is done, and well done!"

Starting from the log with a certain alacrity in his gait and
ascending the hillock of earth that was raised against the stone
circumference of the lime-kiln, he thus reached the top of the
structure. It was a space of perhaps ten feet across, from edge
to edge, presenting a view of the upper surface of the immense
mass of broken marble with which the kiln was heaped. All these
innumerable blocks and fragments of marble were redhot and
vividly on fire, sending up great spouts of blue flame, which
quivered aloft and danced madly, as within a magic circle, and
sank and rose again, with continual and multitudinous activity.