"You will never
make a man, I do believe; there is too much of your mother in you. I
have known the rustling of a leaf startle you. Hark! Here comes the
merry fellow now. You shall see that there is no harm in him."
Bartram and his little son, while they were talking thus, sat watching
the same lime-kiln that had been the scene of Ethan Brand's solitary
and meditative life, before he began his search for the Unpardonable
Sin. Many years, as we have seen, had now elapsed, since that
portentous night when the IDEA was first developed. The kiln, however,
on the mountain-side stood unimpaired, and was in nothing changed
since he had thrown his dark thoughts into the intense glow of its
furnace, and melted them, as it were, into the one thought that took
possession of his life. It was a rude, round, towerlike structure,
about twenty feet high, heavily built of rough stones, and with a
hillock of earth heaped about the larger part of its circumference; so
that the blocks and fragments of marble might be drawn by cart-loads,
and thrown in at the top. There was an opening at the bottom of the
tower, like an oven-mouth, but large enough to admit a man in a
stooping posture, and provided with a massive iron door. With the
smoke and jets of flame issuing from the chinks and crevices of this
door, which seemed to give admittance into the hillside, it resembled
nothing so much as the private entrance to the infernal regions, which
the shepherds of the Delectable Mountains[2] were accustomed to show
to pilgrims.
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