After her return to the prison, Hester Prynne was found to be ina state of nervous excitement, that demanded constantwatchfulness, lest she should perpetrate violence on herself, ordo some half-frenzied mischief to the poor babe. As nightapproached, it proving impossible to quell her insubordinationby rebuke or threats of punishment, Master Brackett, the jailer,thought fit to introduce a physician. He described him as a manof skill in all Christian modes of physical science, andlikewise familiar with whatever the savage people could teach inrespect to medicinal herbs and roots that grew in the forest. Tosay the truth, there was much need of professional assistance,not merely for Hester herself, but still more urgently for thechild--who, drawing its sustenance from the maternal bosom,seemed to have drank in with it all the turmoil, the anguish anddespair, which pervaded the mother's system. It now writhed inconvulsions of pain, and was a forcible type, in its littleframe, of the moral agony which Hester Prynne had bornethroughout the day.

Closely following the jailer into the dismal apartment, appearedthat individual, of singular aspect whose presence in the crowdhad been of such deep interest to the wearer of the scarletletter. He was lodged in the prison, not as suspected of anyoffence, but as the most convenient and suitable mode ofdisposing of him, until the magistrates should have conferredwith the Indian sagamores respecting his ransom. His name wasannounced as Roger Chillingworth. The jailer, after ushering himinto the room, remained a moment, marvelling at the comparativequiet that followed his entrance; for Hester Prynne hadimmediately become as still as death, although the childcontinued to moan.

"Prithee, friend, leave me alone with my patient," said thepractitioner. "Trust me, good jailer, you shall briefly havepeace in your house; and, I promise you, Mistress Prynne shallhereafter be more amenable to just authority than you may havefound her heretofore."

"Nay, if your worship can accomplish that," answered MasterBrackett, "I shall own you for a man of skill, indeed! Verily,the woman hath been like a possessed one; and there lacks littlethat I should take in hand, to drive Satan out of her withstripes."

The stranger had entered the room with the characteristicquietude of the profession to which he announced himself asbelonging. Nor did his demeanour change when the withdrawal ofthe prison keeper left him face to face with the woman, whoseabsorbed notice of him, in the crowd, had intimated so close arelation between himself and her. His first care was given tothe child, whose cries, indeed, as she lay writhing on thetrundle-bed, made it of peremptory necessity to postpone allother business to the task of soothing her. He examined theinfant carefully, and then proceeded to unclasp a leathern case,which he took from beneath his dress. It appeared to containmedical preparations, one of which he mingled with a cup ofwater.

"My old studies in alchemy," observed he, "and my sojourn, forabove a year past, among a people well versed in the kindlyproperties of simples, have made a better physician of me thanmany that claim the medical degree. Here, woman! The child isyours--she is none of mine--neither will she recognise my voiceor aspect as a father's. Administer this draught, therefore,with thine own hand."

Hester repelled the offered medicine, at the same time gazingwith strongly marked apprehension into his face. "Wouldst thouavenge thyself on the innocent babe?" whispered she.

"Foolish woman!" responded the physician, half coldly, halfsoothingly. "What should ail me to harm this misbegotten andmiserable babe? The medicine is potent for good, and were it mychild--yea, mine own, as well as thine! I could do no better forit."

As she still hesitated, being, in fact, in no reasonable stateof mind, he took the infant in his arms, and himselfadministered the draught. It soon proved its efficacy, andredeemed the leech's pledge. The moans of the little patientsubsided; its convulsive tossings gradually ceased; and in a fewmoments, as is the custom of young children after relief frompain, it sank into a profound and dewy slumber. The physician,as he had a fair right to be termed, next bestowed his attentionon the mother. With calm and intent scrutiny, he felt her pulse,looked into her eyes--a gaze that made her heart shrink andshudder, because so familiar, and yet so strange and cold--and,finally, satisfied with his investigation, proceeded to mingleanother draught.

"I know not Lethe nor Nepenthe," remarked he; "but I havelearned many new secrets in the wilderness, and here is one ofthem--a recipe that an Indian taught me, in requital of somelessons of my own, that were as old as Paracelsus. Drink it! Itmay be less soothing than a sinless conscience. That I cannotgive thee. But it will calm the swell and heaving of thypassion, like oil thrown on the waves of a tempestuous sea."

He presented the cup to Hester, who received it with a slow,earnest look into his face; not precisely a look of fear, yetfull of doubt and questioning as to what his purposes might be.She looked also at her slumbering child.

"I have thought of death," said she--"have wished for it--wouldeven have prayed for it, were it fit that such as I should prayfor anything. Yet, if death be in this cup, I bid thee thinkagain, ere thou beholdest me quaff it. See! it is even now at mylips."

"Drink, then," replied he, still with the same cold composure."Dost thou know me so little, Hester Prynne? Are my purposeswont to be so shallow? Even if I imagine a scheme of vengeance,what could I do better for my object than to let thee live--thanto give thee medicines against all harm and peril of life--sothat this burning shame may still blaze upon thy bosom?" As hespoke, he laid his long fore-finger on the scarlet letter, whichforthwith seemed to scorch into Hester's breast, as if it hadbeen red hot. He noticed her involuntary gesture, and smiled."Live, therefore, and bear about thy doom with thee, in the eyesof men and women--in the eyes of him whom thou didst call thyhusband--in the eyes of yonder child! And, that thou mayestlive, take off this draught."

Without further expostulation or delay, Hester Prynne drainedthe cup, and, at the motion of the man of skill, seated herselfon the bed, where the child was sleeping; while he drew the onlychair which the room afforded, and took his own seat beside her.She could not but tremble at these preparations; for she feltthat--having now done all that humanity, or principle, or, if soit were, a refined cruelty, impelled him to do for the relief ofphysical suffering--he was next to treat with her as the manwhom she had most deeply and irreparably injured.

"Hester," said he, "I ask not wherefore, nor how thou hastfallen into the pit, or say, rather, thou hast ascended to thepedestal of infamy on which I found thee. The reason is not farto seek. It was my folly, and thy weakness. I--a man ofthought--the book-worm of great libraries--a man already indecay, having given my best years to feed the hungry dream ofknowledge--what had I to do with youth and beauty like thineown? Misshapen from my birth-hour, how could I delude myselfwith the idea that intellectual gifts might veil physicaldeformity in a young girl's fantasy? Men call me wise. If sageswere ever wise in their own behoof, I might have foreseen allthis. I might have known that, as I came out of the vast anddismal forest, and entered this settlement of Christian men, thevery first object to meet my eyes would be thyself, HesterPrynne, standing up, a statue of ignominy, before the people.Nay, from the moment when we came down the old church-stepstogether, a married pair, I might have beheld the bale-fire ofthat scarlet letter blazing at the end of our path!"

"Thou knowest," said Hester--for, depressed as she was, shecould not endure this last quiet stab at the token of hershame--"thou knowest that I was frank with thee. I felt no love,nor feigned any."

"True," replied he. "It was my folly! I have said it. But, upto that epoch of my life, I had lived in vain. The world hadbeen so cheerless! My heart was a habitation large enough formany guests, but lonely and chill, and without a household fire.I longed to kindle one! It seemed not so wild a dream--old as Iwas, and sombre as I was, and misshapen as I was--that thesimple bliss, which is scattered far and wide, for all mankindto gather up, might yet be mine. And so, Hester, I drew theeinto my heart, into its innermost chamber, and sought to warmthee by the warmth which thy presence made there!"

"I have greatly wronged thee," murmured Hester.

"We have wronged each other," answered he. "Mine was the firstwrong, when I betrayed thy budding youth into a false andunnatural relation with my decay. Therefore, as a man who hasnot thought and philosophised in vain, I seek no vengeance, plotno evil against thee. Between thee and me, the scale hangsfairly balanced. But, Hester, the man lives who has wronged usboth! Who is he?"

"Ask me not!" replied Hester Prynne, looking firmly into hisface. "That thou shalt never know!"

"Never, sayest thou?" rejoined he, with a smile of dark andself-relying intelligence. "Never know him! Believe me, Hester,there are few things whether in the outward world, or, to acertain depth, in the invisible sphere of thought--few thingshidden from the man who devotes himself earnestly andunreservedly to the solution of a mystery. Thou mayest cover upthy secret from the prying multitude. Thou mayest conceal it,too, from the ministers and magistrates, even as thou didst thisday, when they sought to wrench the name out of thy heart, andgive thee a partner on thy pedestal. But, as for me, I come tothe inquest with other senses than they possess. I shall seekthis man, as I have sought truth in books: as I have sought goldin alchemy. There is a sympathy that will make me conscious ofhim. I shall see him tremble. I shall feel myself shudder,suddenly and unawares. Sooner or later, he must needs be mine."

The eyes of the wrinkled scholar glowed so intensely upon her,that Hester Prynne clasped her hand over her heart, dreadinglest he should read the secret there at once.

"Thou wilt not reveal his name? Not the less he is mine,"resumed he, with a look of confidence, as if destiny were at onewith him. "He bears no letter of infamy wrought into hisgarment, as thou dost, but I shall read it on his heart. Yetfear not for him! Think not that I shall interfere with Heaven'sown method of retribution, or, to my own loss, betray him to thegripe of human law. Neither do thou imagine that I shallcontrive aught against his life; no, nor against his fame, if asI judge, he be a man of fair repute. Let him live! Let him hidehimself in outward honour, if he may! Not the less he shall bemine!"

"Thy acts are like mercy," said Hester, bewildered and appalled;"but thy words interpret thee as a terror!"

"One thing, thou that wast my wife, I would enjoin upon thee,"continued the scholar. "Thou hast kept the secret of thyparamour. Keep, likewise, mine! There are none in this land thatknow me. Breathe not to any human soul that thou didst ever callme husband! Here, on this wild outskirt of the earth, I shallpitch my tent; for, elsewhere a wanderer, and isolated fromhuman interests, I find here a woman, a man, a child, amongstwhom and myself there exist the closest ligaments. No matterwhether of love or hate: no matter whether of right or wrong!Thou and thine, Hester Prynne, belong to me. My home is wherethou art and where he is. But betray me not!"

"Wherefore dost thou desire it?" inquired Hester, shrinking, shehardly knew why, from this secret bond. "Why not announcethyself openly, and cast me off at once?"

"It may be," he replied, "because I will not encounter thedishonour that besmirches the husband of a faithless woman. Itmay be for other reasons. Enough, it is my purpose to live anddie unknown. Let, therefore, thy husband be to the world as onealready dead, and of whom no tidings shall ever come. Recogniseme not, by word, by sign, by look! Breathe not the secret, aboveall, to the man thou wottest of. Shouldst thou fail me in this,beware! His fame, his position, his life will be in my hands.Beware!"

"I will keep thy secret, as I have his," said Hester.

"Swear it!" rejoined he.

And she took the oath.

"And now, Mistress Prynne," said old Roger Chillingworth, as hewas hereafter to be named, "I leave thee alone: alone with thyinfant and the scarlet letter! How is it, Hester? Doth thysentence bind thee to wear the token in thy sleep? Art thou notafraid of nightmares and hideous dreams?"

"Why dost thou smile so at me?" inquired Hester, troubled at theexpression of his eyes. "Art thou like the Black Man that hauntsthe forest round about us? Hast thou enticed me into a bond thatwill prove the ruin of my soul?"

"Not thy soul," he answered, with another smile. "No, notthine!"