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 red-hot 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. As the lonely man bent forward
over this terrible body of fire, the blasting heat smote up against
his person with a breath that, it might be supposed, would have
scorched and shrivelled him up in a moment.

Ethan Brand stood erect, and raised his arms on high. The blue flames
played upon his face, and imparted the wild and ghastly light which
alone could have suited its expression; it was that of a fiend on the