A group of townspeople arrive at the scene to gawk at Brand. In the course of his interactions with them, Brand is disturbed by their coarse behavior and begins to doubt whether he really found the unpardonable sin. When the townspeople compare Brand to another so called "madman" named Humphrey, Brand recalls a victim of his search, Esther (Humphrey's daughter), who left the province to become a circus performer and who subsequently became the subject of Brand's psychological experiment. Brand remembers that the research, "wasted, absorbed, and perhaps annihilated her soul, in the process," and so he is again convinced that he found the "unpardonable sin".