Walking in the shadow of a dream, as it were, and perhapsactually under the influence of a species of somnambulism, Mr.Dimmesdale reached the spot where, now so long since, HesterPrynne had lived through her first hours of public ignominy. Thesame platform or scaffold, black and weather-stained with thestorm or sunshine of seven long years, and foot-worn, too, withthe tread of many culprits who had since ascended it, remainedstanding beneath the balcony of the meeting-house. The ministerwent up the steps.

It was an obscure night in early May. An unvaried pall ofcloud muffled the whole expanse of sky from zenith to horizon.If the same multitude which had stood as eye-witnesses whileHester Prynne sustained her punishment could now have beensummoned forth, they would have discerned no face above theplatform nor hardly the outline of a human shape, in the darkgrey of the midnight. But the town was all asleep. There was noperil of discovery. The minister might stand there, if it sopleased him, until morning should redden in the east, withoutother risk than that the dank and chill night air would creepinto his frame, and stiffen his joints with rheumatism, and cloghis throat with catarrh and cough; thereby defrauding theexpectant audience of to-morrow's prayer and sermon. No eyecould see him, save that ever-wakeful one which had seen him inhis closet, wielding the bloody scourge. Why, then, had he comehither? Was it but the mockery of penitence? A mockery, indeed,but in which his soul trifled with itself! A mockery at whichangels blushed and wept, while fiends rejoiced with jeeringlaughter! He had been driven hither by the impulse of thatRemorse which dogged him everywhere, and whose own sister andclosely linked companion was that Cowardice which invariablydrew him back, with her tremulous gripe, just when the otherimpulse had hurried him to the verge of a disclosure. Poor,miserable man! what right had infirmity like his to burdenitself with crime? Crime is for the iron-nerved, who have theirchoice either to endure it, or, if it press too hard, to exerttheir fierce and savage strength for a good purpose, and flingit off at once! This feeble and most sensitive of spirits coulddo neither, yet continually did one thing or another, whichintertwined, in the same inextricable knot, the agony ofheaven-defying guilt and vain repentance.

And thus, while standing on the scaffold, in this vain show ofexpiation, Mr. Dimmesdale was overcome with a great horror ofmind, as if the universe were gazing at a scarlet token on hisnaked breast, right over his heart. On that spot, in very truth,there was, and there had long been, the gnawing and poisonoustooth of bodily pain. Without any effort of his will, or powerto restrain himself, he shrieked aloud: an outcry that wentpealing through the night, and was beaten back from one house toanother, and reverberated from the hills in the background; asif a company of devils, detecting so much misery and terror init, had made a plaything of the sound, and were bandying it toand fro.

"It is done!" muttered the minister, covering his face with hishands. "The whole town will awake and hurry forth, and find mehere!"

But it was not so. The shriek had perhaps sounded with a fargreater power, to his own startled ears, than it actuallypossessed. The town did not awake; or, if it did, the drowsyslumberers mistook the cry either for something frightful in adream, or for the noise of witches, whose voices, at thatperiod, were often heard to pass over the settlements or lonelycottages, as they rode with Satan through the air. Theclergyman, therefore, hearing no symptoms of disturbance,uncovered his eyes and looked about him. At one of thechamber-windows of Governor Bellingham's mansion, which stood atsome distance, on the line of another street, he beheld theappearance of the old magistrate himself with a lamp in his handa white night-cap on his head, and a long white gown envelopinghis figure. He looked like a ghost evoked unseasonably from thegrave. The cry had evidently startled him. At another window ofthe same house, moreover appeared old Mistress Hibbins, theGovernor's sister, also with a lamp, which even thus far offrevealed the expression of her sour and discontented face. Shethrust forth her head from the lattice, and looked anxiouslyupward. Beyond the shadow of a doubt, this venerable witch-ladyhad heard Mr. Dimmesdale's outcry, and interpreted it, with itsmultitudinous echoes and reverberations, as the clamour of thefiends and night-hags, with whom she was well known to makeexcursions in the forest.

Detecting the gleam of Governor Bellingham's lamp, the old ladyquickly extinguished her own, and vanished. Possibly, she wentup among the clouds. The minister saw nothing further of hermotions. The magistrate, after a wary observation of thedarkness--into which, nevertheless, he could see but littlefurther than he might into a mill-stone--retired from thewindow.

The minister grew comparatively calm. His eyes, however, weresoon greeted by a little glimmering light, which, at first along way off was approaching up the street. It threw a gleam ofrecognition, on here a post, and there a garden fence, and herea latticed window-pane, and there a pump, with its full troughof water, and here again an arched door of oak, with an ironknocker, and a rough log for the door-step. The Reverend Mr.Dimmesdale noted all these minute particulars, even while firmlyconvinced that the doom of his existence was stealing onward, inthe footsteps which he now heard; and that the gleam of thelantern would fall upon him in a few moments more, and revealhis long-hidden secret. As the light drew nearer, he beheld,within its illuminated circle, his brother clergyman--or, tospeak more accurately, his professional father, as well ashighly valued friend--the Reverend Mr. Wilson, who, as Mr.Dimmesdale now conjectured, had been praying at the bedside ofsome dying man. And so he had. The good old minister camefreshly from the death-chamber of Governor Winthrop, who hadpassed from earth to heaven within that very hour. And nowsurrounded, like the saint-like personage of olden times, with aradiant halo, that glorified him amid this gloomy night ofsin--as if the departed Governor had left him an inheritance ofhis glory, or as if he had caught upon himself the distant shineof the celestial city, while looking thitherward to see thetriumphant pilgrim pass within its gates--now, in short, goodFather Wilson was moving homeward, aiding his footsteps with alighted lantern! The glimmer of this luminary suggested theabove conceits to Mr. Dimmesdale, who smiled--nay, almostlaughed at them--and then wondered if he was going mad.

As the Reverend Mr. Wilson passed beside the scaffold, closelymuffling his Geneva cloak about him with one arm, and holdingthe lantern before his breast with the other, the minister couldhardly restrain himself from speaking--

"A good evening to you, venerable Father Wilson. Come uphither, I pray you, and pass a pleasant hour with me!"

Good Heavens! Had Mr. Dimmesdale actually spoken? For oneinstant he believed that these words had passed his lips. Butthey were uttered only within his imagination. The venerableFather Wilson continued to step slowly onward, looking carefullyat the muddy pathway before his feet, and never once turning hishead towards the guilty platform. When the light of theglimmering lantern had faded quite away, the ministerdiscovered, by the faintness which came over him, that the lastfew moments had been a crisis of terrible anxiety, although hismind had made an involuntary effort to relieve itself by a kindof lurid playfulness.

Shortly afterwards, the like grisly sense of the humorous againstole in among the solemn phantoms of his thought. He felt hislimbs growing stiff with the unaccustomed chilliness of thenight, and doubted whether he should be able to descend thesteps of the scaffold. Morning would break and find him there.The neighbourhood would begin to rouse itself. The earliestriser, coming forth in the dim twilight, would perceive avaguely-defined figure aloft on the place of shame; andhalf-crazed betwixt alarm and curiosity, would go knocking fromdoor to door, summoning all the people to behold the ghost--ashe needs must think it--of some defunct transgressor. A duskytumult would flap its wings from one house to another. Then--themorning light still waxing stronger--old patriarchs would riseup in great haste, each in his flannel gown, and matronly dames,without pausing to put off their night-gear. The whole tribe ofdecorous personages, who had never heretofore been seen with asingle hair of their heads awry, would start into public viewwith the disorder of a nightmare in their aspects. Old GovernorBellingham would come grimly forth, with his King James' rufffastened askew, and Mistress Hibbins, with some twigs of theforest clinging to her skirts, and looking sourer than ever, ashaving hardly got a wink of sleep after her night ride; and goodFather Wilson too, after spending half the night at a death-bed,and liking ill to be disturbed, thus early, out of his dreamsabout the glorified saints. Hither, likewise, would come theelders and deacons of Mr. Dimmesdale's church, and the youngvirgins who so idolized their minister, and had made a shrinefor him in their white bosoms, which now, by-the-bye, in theirhurry and confusion, they would scantly have given themselvestime to cover with their kerchiefs. All people, in a word, wouldcome stumbling over their thresholds, and turning up theiramazed and horror-stricken visages around the scaffold. Whomwould they discern there, with the red eastern light upon hisbrow? Whom, but the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, half-frozen todeath, overwhelmed with shame, and standing where Hester Prynnehad stood!

Carried away by the grotesque horror of this picture, theminister, unawares, and to his own infinite alarm, burst into agreat peal of laughter. It was immediately responded to by alight, airy, childish laugh, in which, with a thrill of theheart--but he knew not whether of exquisite pain, or pleasure asacute--he recognised the tones of little Pearl.

"Pearl! Little Pearl!" cried he, after a moment's pause; then,suppressing his voice--"Hester! Hester Prynne! Are you there?"

"Yes; it is Hester Prynne!" she replied, in a tone of surprise;and the minister heard her footsteps approaching from theside-walk, along which she had been passing. "It is I, and mylittle Pearl."

"Whence come you, Hester?" asked the minister. "What sent youhither?"

"I have been watching at a death-bed," answered Hester Prynne"at Governor Winthrop's death-bed, and have taken his measurefor a robe, and am now going homeward to my dwelling."

"Come up hither, Hester, thou and little Pearl," said theReverend Mr. Dimmesdale. "Ye have both been here before, but Iwas not with you. Come up hither once again, and we will standall three together."

She silently ascended the steps, and stood on the platform,holding little Pearl by the hand. The minister felt for thechild's other hand, and took it. The moment that he did so,there came what seemed a tumultuous rush of new life, other lifethan his own pouring like a torrent into his heart, and hurryingthrough all his veins, as if the mother and the child werecommunicating their vital warmth to his half-torpid system. Thethree formed an electric chain.

"Minister!" whispered little Pearl.

"What wouldst thou say, child?" asked Mr. Dimmesdale.

"Wilt thou stand here with mother and me, to-morrow noontide?"inquired Pearl.

"Nay; not so, my little Pearl," answered the minister; for, withthe new energy of the moment, all the dread of public exposure,that had so long been the anguish of his life, had returned uponhim; and he was already trembling at the conjunction inwhich--with a strange joy, nevertheless--he now foundhimself--"not so, my child. I shall, indeed, stand with thymother and thee one other day, but not to-morrow."

Pearl laughed, and attempted to pull away her hand. But theminister held it fast.

"A moment longer, my child!" said he.

"But wilt thou promise," asked Pearl, "to take my hand, andmother's hand, to-morrow noontide?"

"Not then, Pearl," said the minister; "but another time."

"And what other time?" persisted the child.

"At the great judgment day," whispered the minister; and,strangely enough, the sense that he was a professional teacherof the truth impelled him to answer the child so. "Then, andthere, before the judgment-seat, thy mother, and thou, and Imust stand together. But the daylight of this world shall notsee our meeting!"

Pearl laughed again.

But before Mr. Dimmesdale had done speaking, a light gleamed farand wide over all the muffled sky. It was doubtless caused byone of those meteors, which the night-watcher may so oftenobserve burning out to waste, in the vacant regions of theatmosphere. So powerful was its radiance, that it thoroughlyilluminated the dense medium of cloud betwixt the sky and earth.The great vault brightened, like the dome of an immense lamp. Itshowed the familiar scene of the street with the distinctness ofmid-day, but also with the awfulness that is always imparted tofamiliar objects by an unaccustomed light. The wooden houses,with their jutting storeys and quaint gable-peaks; the doorstepsand thresholds with the early grass springing up about them; thegarden-plots, black with freshly-turned earth; the wheel-track,little worn, and even in the market-place margined with green oneither side--all were visible, but with a singularity of aspectthat seemed to give another moral interpretation to the thingsof this world than they had ever borne before. And there stoodthe minister, with his hand over his heart; and Hester Prynne,with the embroidered letter glimmering on her bosom; and littlePearl, herself a symbol, and the connecting link between thosetwo. They stood in the noon of that strange and solemnsplendour, as if it were the light that is to reveal allsecrets, and the daybreak that shall unite all who belong to oneanother.

There was witchcraft in little Pearl's eyes; and her face, asshe glanced upward at the minister, wore that naughty smilewhich made its expression frequently so elvish. She withdrew herhand from Mr. Dimmesdale's, and pointed across the street. Buthe clasped both his hands over his breast, and cast his eyestowards the zenith.

Nothing was more common, in those days, than to interpret allmeteoric appearances, and other natural phenomena that occurredwith less regularity than the rise and set of sun and moon, asso many revelations from a supernatural source. Thus, a blazingspear, a sword of flame, a bow, or a sheaf of arrows seen in themidnight sky, prefigured Indian warfare. Pestilence was known tohave been foreboded by a shower of crimson light. We doubtwhether any marked event, for good or evil, ever befell NewEngland, from its settlement down to revolutionary times, ofwhich the inhabitants had not been previously warned by somespectacle of its nature. Not seldom, it had been seen bymultitudes. Oftener, however, its credibility rested on thefaith of some lonely eye-witness, who beheld the wonder throughthe coloured, magnifying, and distorted medium of hisimagination, and shaped it more distinctly in his after-thought.It was, indeed, a majestic idea that the destiny of nationsshould be revealed, in these awful hieroglyphics, on the cope ofheaven. A scroll so wide might not be deemed too expensive forProvidence to write a people's doom upon. The belief was afavourite one with our forefathers, as betokening that theirinfant commonwealth was under a celestial guardianship ofpeculiar intimacy and strictness. But what shall we say, when anindividual discovers a revelation addressed to himself alone, onthe same vast sheet of record. In such a case, it could only bethe symptom of a highly disordered mental state, when a man,rendered morbidly self-contemplative by long, intense, andsecret pain, had extended his egotism over the whole expanse ofnature, until the firmament itself should appear no more than afitting page for his soul's history and fate.

We impute it, therefore, solely to the disease in his own eyeand heart that the minister, looking upward to the zenith,beheld there the appearance of an immense letter--the letterA--marked out in lines of dull red light. Not but the meteor mayhave shown itself at that point, burning duskily through a veilof cloud, but with no such shape as his guilty imagination gaveit, or, at least, with so little definiteness, that another'sguilt might have seen another symbol in it.

There was a singular circumstance that characterised Mr.Dimmesdale's psychological state at this moment. All the timethat he gazed upward to the zenith, he was, nevertheless,perfectly aware that little Pearl was pointing her finger towardsold Roger Chillingworth, who stood at no great distance from thescaffold. The minister appeared to see him, with the same glancethat discerned the miraculous letter. To his feature as to allother objects, the meteoric light imparted a new expression; orit might well be that the physician was not careful then, as atall other times, to hide the malevolence with which he lookedupon his victim. Certainly, if the meteor kindled up the sky,and disclosed the earth, with an awfulness that admonishedHester Prynne and the clergyman of the day of judgment, thenmight Roger Chillingworth have passed with them for thearch-fiend, standing there with a smile and scowl, to claim hisown. So vivid was the expression, or so intense the minister'sperception of it, that it seemed still to remain painted on thedarkness after the meteor had vanished, with an effect as if thestreet and all things else were at once annihilated.

"Who is that man, Hester?" gasped Mr. Dimmesdale, overcome withterror. "I shiver at him! Dost thou know the man? I hate him,Hester!"

She remembered her oath, and was silent.

"I tell thee, my soul shivers at him!" muttered the ministeragain. "Who is he? Who is he? Canst thou do nothing for me? Ihave a nameless horror of the man!"

"Minister," said little Pearl, "I can tell thee who he is!"

"Quickly, then, child!" said the minister, bending his ear closeto her lips. "Quickly, and as low as thou canst whisper."

Pearl mumbled something into his ear that sounded, indeed, likehuman language, but was only such gibberish as children may beheard amusing themselves with by the hour together. At allevents, if it involved any secret information in regard to oldRoger Chillingworth, it was in a tongue unknown to the eruditeclergyman, and did but increase the bewilderment of his mind.The elvish child then laughed aloud.

"Dost thou mock me now?" said the minister.

"Thou wast not bold!--thou wast not true!" answered the child."Thou wouldst not promise to take my hand, and mother's hand,to-morrow noon-tide!"

"Worthy sir," answered the physician, who had now advanced tothe foot of the platform--"pious Master Dimmesdale! can this beyou? Well, well, indeed! We men of study, whose heads are in ourbooks, have need to be straitly looked after! We dream in ourwaking moments, and walk in our sleep. Come, good sir, and mydear friend, I pray you let me lead you home!"

"How knewest thou that I was here?" asked the minister,fearfully.

"Verily, and in good faith," answered Roger Chillingworth, "Iknew nothing of the matter. I had spent the better part of thenight at the bedside of the worshipful Governor Winthrop, doingwhat my poor skill might to give him ease. He, going home to abetter world, I, likewise, was on my way homeward, when thislight shone out. Come with me, I beseech you, Reverend sir, elseyou will be poorly able to do Sabbath duty to-morrow. Aha! seenow how they trouble the brain--these books!--these books! Youshould study less, good sir, and take a little pastime, or thesenight whimsies will grow upon you."

"I will go home with you," said Mr. Dimmesdale.

With a chill despondency, like one awakening, all nerveless,from an ugly dream, he yielded himself to the physician, and wasled away.

The next day, however, being the Sabbath, he preached adiscourse which was held to be the richest and most powerful,and the most replete with heavenly influences, that had everproceeded from his lips. Souls, it is said, more souls than one,were brought to the truth by the efficacy of that sermon, andvowed within themselves to cherish a holy gratitude towards Mr.Dimmesdale throughout the long hereafter. But as he came downthe pulpit steps, the grey-bearded sexton met him, holding up ablack glove, which the minister recognised as his own.

"It was found," said the Sexton, "this morning on the scaffoldwhere evil-doers are set up to public shame. Satan dropped itthere, I take it, intending a scurrilous jest against yourreverence. But, indeed, he was blind and foolish, as he ever andalways is. A pure hand needs no glove to cover it!"

"Thank you, my good friend," said the minister, gravely, butstartled at heart; for so confused was his remembrance, that hehad almost brought himself to look at the events of the pastnight as visionary.

"Yes, it seems to be my glove, indeed!"

"And, since Satan saw fit to steal it, your reverence must needshandle him without gloves henceforward," remarked the oldsexton, grimly smiling. "But did your reverence hear of theportent that was seen last night? a great red letter in thesky--the letter A, which we interpret to stand for Angel. For,as our good Governor Winthrop was made an angel this past night,it was doubtless held fit that there should be some noticethereof!"

"No," answered the minister; "I had not heard of it."