[NOTE.]
Thanks are due to the several American authors represented in this collection, and to their publishers, for the permission kindly given to use selections from their copyrighted works.
[ETHAN BRAND.]
BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
Bartram the lime-burner, a rough, heavy-looking man, begrimed with charcoal, sat watching his kiln, at nightfall, while his little son played at building houses with the scattered fragments of marble, when, on the hillside below them, they heard a roar of laughter, not mirthful, but slow, and even solemn, like a wind shaking the boughs of the forest.