So Roger Chillingworth--a deformed old figure with a face thathaunted men's memories longer than they liked--took leave ofHester Prynne, and went stooping away along the earth. Hegathered here and there a herb, or grubbed up a root and put itinto the basket on his arm. His gray beard almost touched theground as he crept onward. Hester gazed after him a littlewhile, looking with a half fantastic curiosity to see whetherthe tender grass of early spring would not be blighted beneathhim and show the wavering track of his footsteps, sere andbrown, across its cheerful verdure. She wondered what sort ofherbs they were which the old man was so sedulous to gather.Would not the earth, quickened to an evil purpose by thesympathy of his eye, greet him with poisonous shrubs of specieshitherto unknown, that would start up under his fingers? Ormight it suffice him that every wholesome growth should beconverted into something deleterious and malignant at his touch?Did the sun, which shone so brightly everywhere else, reallyfall upon him? Or was there, as it rather seemed, a circle ofominous shadow moving along with his deformity whichever way heturned himself? And whither was he now going? Would he notsuddenly sink into the earth, leaving a barren and blasted spot,where, in due course of time, would be seen deadly nightshade,dogwood, henbane, and whatever else of vegetable wickedness theclimate could produce, all flourishing with hideous luxuriance?Or would he spread bat's wings and flee away, looking so muchthe uglier the higher he rose towards heaven?

"Be it sin or no," said Hester Prynne, bitterly, as still shegazed after him, "I hate the man!"

She upbraided herself for the sentiment, but could not overcomeor lessen it. Attempting to do so, she thought of thoselong-past days in a distant land, when he used to emerge ateventide from the seclusion of his study and sit down in thefirelight of their home, and in the light of her nuptial smile.He needed to bask himself in that smile, he said, in order thatthe chill of so many lonely hours among his books might be takenoff the scholar's heart. Such scenes had once appeared nototherwise than happy, but now, as viewed through the dismalmedium of her subsequent life, they classed themselves among herugliest remembrances. She marvelled how such scenes could havebeen! She marvelled how she could ever have been wrought upon tomarry him! She deemed it her crime most to be repented of, thatshe had ever endured and reciprocated the lukewarm grasp of hishand, and had suffered the smile of her lips and eyes to mingleand melt into his own. And it seemed a fouler offence committedby Roger Chillingworth than any which had since been done him,that, in the time when her heart knew no better, he hadpersuaded her to fancy herself happy by his side.

"Yes, I hate him!" repeated Hester more bitterly than before."He betrayed me! He has done me worse wrong than I did him!"

Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win alongwith it the utmost passion of her heart! Else it may be theirmiserable fortune, as it was Roger Chillingworth's, when somemightier touch than their own may have awakened all hersensibilities, to be reproached even for the calm content, themarble image of happiness, which they will have imposed upon heras the warm reality. But Hester ought long ago to have done withthis injustice. What did it betoken? Had seven long years, underthe torture of the scarlet letter, inflicted so much of miseryand wrought out no repentance?

The emotion of that brief space, while she stood gazing afterthe crooked figure of old Roger Chillingworth, threw a darklight on Hester's state of mind, revealing much that she mightnot otherwise have acknowledged to herself.

He being gone, she summoned back her child.

"Pearl! Little Pearl! Where are you?"

Pearl, whose activity of spirit never flagged, had been at noloss for amusement while her mother talked with the old gathererof herbs. At first, as already told, she had flirted fancifullywith her own image in a pool of water, beckoning the phantomforth, and--as it declined to venture--seeking a passage forherself into its sphere of impalpable earth and unattainablesky. Soon finding, however, that either she or the image wasunreal, she turned elsewhere for better pastime. She made littleboats out of birch-bark, and freighted them with snailshells,and sent out more ventures on the mighty deep than any merchantin New England; but the larger part of them foundered near theshore. She seized a live horse-shoe by the tail, and made prizeof several five-fingers, and laid out a jelly-fish to melt inthe warm sun. Then she took up the white foam that streaked theline of the advancing tide, and threw it upon the breeze,scampering after it with winged footsteps to catch the greatsnowflakes ere they fell. Perceiving a flock of beach-birds thatfed and fluttered along the shore, the naughty child picked upher apron full of pebbles, and, creeping from rock to rock afterthese small sea-fowl, displayed remarkable dexterity in peltingthem. One little gray bird, with a white breast, Pearl wasalmost sure had been hit by a pebble, and fluttered away with abroken wing. But then the elf-child sighed, and gave up hersport, because it grieved her to have done harm to a littlebeing that was as wild as the sea-breeze, or as wild as Pearlherself.

Her final employment was to gather seaweed of various kinds, andmake herself a scarf or mantle, and a head-dress, and thusassume the aspect of a little mermaid. She inherited hermother's gift for devising drapery and costume. As the lasttouch to her mermaid's garb, Pearl took some eel-grass andimitated, as best she could, on her own bosom the decorationwith which she was so familiar on her mother's. A letter--theletter A--but freshly green instead of scarlet. The child benther chin upon her breast, and contemplated this device withstrange interest, even as if the one only thing for which shehad been sent into the world was to make out its hidden import.

"I wonder if mother will ask me what it means?" thought Pearl.

Just then she heard her mother's voice, and, flitting along aslightly as one of the little sea-birds, appeared before HesterPrynne dancing, laughing, and pointing her finger to theornament upon her bosom.

"My little Pearl," said Hester, after a moment's silence, "thegreen letter, and on thy childish bosom, has no purport. Butdost thou know, my child, what this letter means which thymother is doomed to wear?"

"Yes, mother," said the child. "It is the great letter A. Thouhast taught me in the horn-book."

Hester looked steadily into her little face; but though therewas that singular expression which she had so often remarked inher black eyes, she could not satisfy herself whether Pearlreally attached any meaning to the symbol. She felt a morbiddesire to ascertain the point.

"Dost thou know, child, wherefore thy mother wears this letter?"

"Truly do I!" answered Pearl, looking brightly into her mother'sface. "It is for the same reason that the minister keeps hishand over his heart!"

"And what reason is that?" asked Hester, half smiling at theabsurd incongruity of the child's observation; but on secondthoughts turning pale.

"What has the letter to do with any heart save mine?"

"Nay, mother, I have told all I know," said Pearl, moreseriously than she was wont to speak. "Ask yonder old man whomthou hast been talking with,--it may be he can tell. But in goodearnest now, mother dear, what does this scarlet lettermean?--and why dost thou wear it on thy bosom?--and why does theminister keep his hand over his heart?"

She took her mother's hand in both her own, and gazed into hereyes with an earnestness that was seldom seen in her wild andcapricious character. The thought occurred to Hester, that thechild might really be seeking to approach her with childlikeconfidence, and doing what she could, and as intelligently asshe knew how, to establish a meeting-point of sympathy. Itshowed Pearl in an unwonted aspect. Heretofore, the mother,while loving her child with the intensity of a sole affection,had schooled herself to hope for little other return than thewaywardness of an April breeze, which spends its time in airysport, and has its gusts of inexplicable passion, and ispetulant in its best of moods, and chills oftener than caressesyou, when you take it to your bosom; in requital of whichmisdemeanours it will sometimes, of its own vague purpose, kissyour cheek with a kind of doubtful tenderness, and play gentlywith your hair, and then be gone about its other idle business,leaving a dreamy pleasure at your heart. And this, moreover, wasa mother's estimate of the child's disposition. Any otherobserver might have seen few but unamiable traits, and havegiven them a far darker colouring. But now the idea camestrongly into Hester's mind, that Pearl, with her remarkableprecocity and acuteness, might already have approached the agewhen she could have been made a friend, and intrusted with asmuch of her mother's sorrows as could be imparted, withoutirreverence either to the parent or the child. In the littlechaos of Pearl's character there might be seen emerging andcould have been from the very first--the steadfast principles ofan unflinching courage--an uncontrollable will--sturdy pride,which might be disciplined into self-respect--and a bitter scornof many things which, when examined, might be found to have thetaint of falsehood in them. She possessed affections, too,though hitherto acrid and disagreeable, as are the richestflavours of unripe fruit. With all these sterling attributes,thought Hester, the evil which she inherited from her mothermust be great indeed, if a noble woman do not grow out of thiselfish child.

Pearl's inevitable tendency to hover about the enigma of thescarlet letter seemed an innate quality of her being. From theearliest epoch of her conscious life, she had entered upon thisas her appointed mission. Hester had often fancied thatProvidence had a design of justice and retribution, in endowingthe child with this marked propensity; but never, until now, hadshe bethought herself to ask, whether, linked with that design,there might not likewise be a purpose of mercy and beneficence.If little Pearl were entertained with faith and trust, as aspirit messenger no less than an earthly child, might it not beher errand to soothe away the sorrow that lay cold in hermother's heart, and converted it into a tomb?--and to help herto overcome the passion, once so wild, and even yet neither deadnor asleep, but only imprisoned within the same tomb-like heart?

Such were some of the thoughts that now stirred in Hester'smind, with as much vivacity of impression as if they hadactually been whispered into her ear. And there was littlePearl, all this while, holding her mother's hand in both herown, and turning her face upward, while she put these searchingquestions, once and again, and still a third time.

"What does the letter mean, mother? and why dost thou wear it?and why does the minister keep his hand over his heart?"

"What shall I say?" thought Hester to herself. "No! if this bethe price of the child's sympathy, I cannot pay it."

Then she spoke aloud--

"Silly Pearl," said she, "what questions are these? There aremany things in this world that a child must not ask about. Whatknow I of the minister's heart? And as for the scarlet letter, Iwear it for the sake of its gold thread."

In all the seven bygone years, Hester Prynne had never beforebeen false to the symbol on her bosom. It may be that it was thetalisman of a stern and severe, but yet a guardian spirit, whonow forsook her; as recognising that, in spite of his strictwatch over her heart, some new evil had crept into it, or someold one had never been expelled. As for little Pearl, theearnestness soon passed out of her face.

But the child did not see fit to let the matter drop. Two orthree times, as her mother and she went homeward, and as oftenat supper-time, and while Hester was putting her to bed, andonce after she seemed to be fairly asleep, Pearl looked up, withmischief gleaming in her black eyes.

"Mother," said she, "what does the scarlet letter mean?"

And the next morning, the first indication the child gave ofbeing awake was by popping up her head from the pillow, andmaking that other enquiry, which she had so unaccountablyconnected with her investigations about the scarlet letter--

"Mother!--Mother!--Why does the minister keep his hand over hisheart?"

"Hold thy tongue, naughty child!" answered her mother, with anasperity that she had never permitted to herself before. "Do nottease me; else I shall put thee into the dark closet!"