by Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1850
Eighteen years after walking away from his lime-kiln to search the world for the Unpardonable Sin, Ethan Brand returns to find it was in his own heart all along: the cold, remorseless intellect that turned other souls into experiments. He faces down a jeering crowd of drunks, a showman with a diorama, and the father of the girl he ruined, then climbs onto the kiln at dawn and gives himself to the fire, leaving only a skeleton with a heart burned to marble.