The moral of the story is that goodness, specifically a kind of Christian charity and love of God's creation, will triumph over arrogance and selfishness. In fact, Ruskin singles out the sin of avarice, or greed for money, as the root of the evil in the Black brothers' characters. All of their cruelty and exploitation of others— their abuse of Gluck, their refusal to share anything they own with anyone else, their cheating, lying, and stealing— stems from their insatiable love of money. Their own obsession with gold drives them to their inevitable destruction.

Ruskin carefully connects the theme of avarice with the idea that a spiritual bond exists between man and nature.

One of the first things we learn about the evil Black brothers is that they "farm" the beautiful Treasure Valley by killing "everything that did not pay for its...