Get ye gone!"
"Why, you uncivil scoundrel," cried the fierce doctor, "is that the
way you respond to the kindness of your best friends? Then let me tell
you the truth. You have no more found the Unpardonable Sin than yonder
boy Joe has. You are but a crazy fellow,--I told you so twenty years
ago,--neither better nor worse than a crazy fellow, and a fit
companion of old Humphrey, here!"
He pointed to an old man, shabbily dressed, with long white hair, thin
visage, and unsteady eyes. For some years past this aged person had
been wandering about among the hills, inquiring of all travellers whom
he met for his daughter. The girl, it seemed, had gone off with a
company of circus performers; and occasionally tidings of her came to
the village, and fine stories were told of her glittering appearance
as she rode on horseback in the ring, or performed marvellous feats on
the tight rope.
The white-haired father now approached Ethan Brand, and gazed
unsteadily into his face.
"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.
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