sight, and his swift and light footsteps ceased to be heard
treading first on the fallen leaves and then on the rocky
mountain-path, the lime-burner began to regret his departure. He felt
that the little fellow's presence had been a barrier between his guest
and himself, and that he must now deal, heart to heart, with a man who,
on his own confession, had committed the one only crime for which
Heaven could afford no mercy. That crime, in its indistinct blackness,
seemed to overshadow him, and made his memory riotous with a throng of
evil shapes that asserted their kindred with the Master Sin, whatever
it might be, which it was within the scope of man's corrupted nature to
conceive and cherish. They were all of one family; they went to and fro
between his breast and Ethan Brand's, and carried dark greetings from
one to the other.

Then Bartram remembered the stories which had grown traditionary in
reference to this strange man, who had come upon him like a 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!"

"