第22章

Ethan Brand, it was said, had conversed with Satan himself in thelurid blaze of this very kiln. The legend had been matter of mirthheretofore but looked grisly now. According to this tale, before EthanBrand departed on his search, he had been accustomed to evoke afiend from the hot furnace of the lime-kiln, night after night, inorder to confer with him about the Unpardonable Sin; the man and thefiend each laboring to frame the image of some mode of guilt whichcould neither be atoned for nor forgiven. And, with the first gleam oflight upon the mountain-top, the fiend crept in at the iron door,there to abide the intensest element of fire, until again summonedforth to share in the dreadful task of extending man's possibleguilt beyond the scope of Heaven's else infinite mercy.

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

"Hold! hold!" cried he, with a tremulous attempt to laugh; for hewas 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 halfwaysinners as you that he busies himself. Fear not because I open thedoor. I do but act by old custom, and am going to trim your fire, likea lime-burner, as I was once."He stirred the vast coals, thrust in more wood, and bent forward togaze into the hollow prison-house of the fire, regardless of thefierce glow that reddened upon his face. The lime-burner satwatching him, and half suspected his strange guest of a purpose, ifnot to evoke a fiend, at least to plunge bodily into the flames, andthus vanish from the sight of man. Ethan Brand, however, drewquietly back, and closed the door of the kiln.

"I have looked, said he, "into many a human heart that was seventimes hotter with sinful passions than yonder furnace is with fire.

But I found not there what I sought. No, not the Unpardonable Sin!""What is the Unpardonable Sin?" asked the lime-burner; and thenhe shrank further from his companion, trembling lest his questionshould be answered.

"It is a sin that grew within my own breast," replied EthanBrand, standing erect, with a pride that distinguishes all enthusiastsof his stamp. "A sin that grew nowhere else! The sin of an intellectthat triumphed over the sense of brotherhood with man and reverencefor God, and sacrificed everything to its own mighty claims! Theonly sin that deserves a recompense of immortal agony! Freely, were itto do again, would I incur the guilt. Unshrinkingly I accept theretribution!""The man's head is turned," muttered the lime-burner to himself.

"He may be a sinner, like the rest of us- nothing more likely- but,I'll be sworn, he is a madman too."Nevertheless he felt uncomfortable at his situation, alone withEthan Brand on the wild mountain-side, and was right glad to hearthe rough murmur of tongues, and the footsteps of what seemed a prettynumerous party, stumbling over the stones and rustling through theunderbrush. Soon appeared the whole lazy regiment that was wont toinfest the village tavern comprehending three or four individualswho had drunk flip beside the bar-room fire through all the winters,and smoked their pipes beneath the stoop through all the summers,since Ethan Brand's departure. Laughing boisterously, and mingling alltheir voices together in unceremonious talk, they now burst into themoonshine and narrow streaks of fire-light that illuminated the openspace before the lime-kiln. Bartram set the door ajar again,flooding the spot with light, that the whole company might get afair view of Ethan Brand, and he of them.

There, among other old acquaintances, was a once ubiquitous man,now almost extinct, but whom we were formerly sure to encounter at thehotel of every thriving village throughout the country. It was thestage-agent. The present specimen of the genus was a wilted andsmoke-dried man, wrinkled and red-nosed, in a smartly cut, brown,bob-tailed coat, with brass buttons, who, for a length of timeunknown, had kept his desk and corner in the bar-room, and was stillpuffing what seemed to be the same cigar that he had lighted twentyyears before. He had great fame as a dry joker, though, perhaps,less on account of any intrinsic humor than from a certain flavor ofbrandy-toddy and tobacco-smoke, which impregnated all his ideas andexpressions, as well as his person. Another well-remembered thoughstrangely altered face was that of Lawyer Giles, as people stillcalled him in courtesy; an elderly ragamuffin, in his soiledshirt-sleeves and tow-cloth trousers. This poor fellow had been anattorney, in what he called his better days, a sharp practitioner, andin great vogue among the village litigants; but flip, and sling, andtoddy, and cocktails, imbibed at all hours, morning, noon, andnight, had caused him to slide from intellectual to various kindsand degrees of bodily labor, till, at last, to adopt his own phrase,he slid into a soap-vat. In other words, Giles was now asoap-boiler, in a small way. He had come to be but the fragment of ahuman being, a part of one foot having been chopped off by an axe, andan entire hand torn away by the devilish grip of a steam-engine.