So, swaying to and fro upon
his horse, and grumbling thick accents at the bedside, he visited all
the sick chambers for miles about among the mountain towns, and
sometimes raised a dying man, as it were, by miracle, or quite as
often, no doubt, sent his patient to a grave that was dug many a year
too soon. The doctor had an everlasting pipe in his mouth, and, as
somebody said, in allusion to his habit of swearing, it was always
alight with hell-fire.
These three worthies pressed forward, and greeted Ethan Brand each
after his own fashion, earnestly inviting him to partake of the
contents of a certain black bottle, in which, as they averred, he
would find something far better worth seeking for than the
Unpardonable Sin. No mind, which has wrought itself by intense and
solitary meditation into a high state of enthusiasm, can endure the
kind of contact with low and vulgar modes of thought and feeling to
which Ethan Brand was now subjected. It made him doubt--and, strange
to say, it was a painful doubt,--whether he had indeed found the
Unpardonable Sin and found it within himself. The whole question on
which he had exhausted life, and more than life, looked like a
delusion.
"Leave me," he said bitterly, "ye brute beasts, that have made
yourselves so, shrivelling up your souls with fiery liquors! I have
done with you. Years and years ago, I groped into your hearts, and
found nothing there for my purpose.
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