"They tell me you have been all over the earth," said he, wringing his
hands with earnestness. "You must have seen my daughter, for she makes
a grand figure in the world, and everybody goes to see her. Did she
send any word to her old father, or say when she was coming back?"

Ethan Brand's eye quailed beneath the old man's. That daughter, from
whom he so earnestly desired a word of greeting, was the Esther of our
tale, the very girl whom, with such cold and remorseless purpose,
Ethan Brand had made the subject of a psychological experiment, and
wasted, absorbed, and perhaps annihilated her soul, in the process.

"Yes," murmured he, turning away from the hoary wanderer; "it is no
delusion. There is an Unpardonable Sin!"

While these things were passing, a merry scene was going forward in
the area of cheerful light, beside the spring and before the door of
the hut. A number of the youth of the village, young men and girls,
had hurried up the hillside, impelled by curiosity to see Ethan Brand,
the hero of so many a legend familiar to their childhood. Finding
nothing, however, very remarkable in his aspect,--nothing but a
sunburnt wayfarer, in plain garb and dusty shoes, who sat looking into
the fire, as if he fancied pictures among the coals,--these young
people speedily grew tired of observing him. As it happened, there was
other amusement at hand. An old German Jew, travelling with a
diorama[4] on his back, was passing down, the mountain road towards
the village just as the party turned aside from it, and, in hopes of
eking out the profits of the day, the showman had kept them company to
the lime-kiln.