Arthur Dimmesdale gazed into Hester's face with a look in whichhope and joy shone out, indeed, but with fear betwixt them, anda kind of horror at her boldness, who had spoken what he vaguelyhinted at, but dared not speak.

But Hester Prynne, with a mind of native courage and activity,and for so long a period not merely estranged, but outlawed fromsociety, had habituated herself to such latitude of speculationas was altogether foreign to the clergyman. She had wandered,without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness, as vast, asintricate, and shadowy as the untamed forest, amid the gloom ofwhich they were now holding a colloquy that was to decide theirfate. Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, indesert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian inhis woods. For years past she had looked from this estrangedpoint of view at human institutions, and whatever priests orlegislators had established; criticising all with hardly morereverence than the Indian would feel for the clerical band, thejudicial robe, the pillory, the gallows, the fireside, or thechurch. The tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to sether free. The scarlet letter was her passport into regions whereother women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These hadbeen her teachers--stern and wild ones--and they had made herstrong, but taught her much amiss.

The minister, on the other hand, had never gone through anexperience calculated to lead him beyond the scope of generallyreceived laws; although, in a single instance, he had sofearfully transgressed one of the most sacred of them. But thishad been a sin of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose.Since that wretched epoch, he had watched with morbid zeal andminuteness, not his acts--for those it was easy to arrange--buteach breath of emotion, and his every thought. At the head ofthe social system, as the clergymen of that day stood, he wasonly the more trammelled by its regulations, its principles, andeven its prejudices. As a priest, the framework of his orderinevitably hemmed him in. As a man who had once sinned, but whokept his conscience all alive and painfully sensitive by thefretting of an unhealed wound, he might have been supposed saferwithin the line of virtue than if he had never sinned at all.

Thus we seem to see that, as regarded Hester Prynne, the wholeseven years of outlaw and ignominy had been little other than apreparation for this very hour. But Arthur Dimmesdale! Were sucha man once more to fall, what plea could be urged in extenuationof his crime? None; unless it avail him somewhat that he wasbroken down by long and exquisite suffering; that his mind wasdarkened and confused by the very remorse which harrowed it;that, between fleeing as an avowed criminal, and remaining as ahypocrite, conscience might find it hard to strike the balance;that it was human to avoid the peril of death and infamy, andthe inscrutable machinations of an enemy; that, finally, to thispoor pilgrim, on his dreary and desert path, faint, sick,miserable, there appeared a glimpse of human affection andsympathy, a new life, and a true one, in exchange for the heavydoom which he was now expiating. And be the stern and sad truthspoken, that the breach which guilt has once made into the humansoul is never, in this mortal state, repaired. It may be watchedand guarded, so that the enemy shall not force his way againinto the citadel, and might even in his subsequent assaults,select some other avenue, in preference to that where he hadformerly succeeded. But there is still the ruined wall, and nearit the stealthy tread of the foe that would win over again hisunforgotten triumph.

The struggle, if there were one, need not be described. Let itsuffice that the clergyman resolved to flee, and not alone.

"If in all these past seven years," thought he, "I could recallone instant of peace or hope, I would yet endure, for the sakeof that earnest of Heaven's mercy. But now--since I amirrevocably doomed--wherefore should I not snatch the solaceallowed to the condemned culprit before his execution? Or, ifthis be the path to a better life, as Hester would persuade me,I surely give up no fairer prospect by pursuing it! Neither canI any longer live without her companionship; so powerful is sheto sustain--so tender to soothe! O Thou to whom I dare not liftmine eyes, wilt Thou yet pardon me?"

"Thou wilt go!" said Hester calmly, as he met her glance.

The decision once made, a glow of strange enjoyment threw itsflickering brightness over the trouble of his breast. It was theexhilarating effect--upon a prisoner just escaped from thedungeon of his own heart--of breathing the wild, free atmosphereof an unredeemed, unchristianised, lawless region. His spiritrose, as it were, with a bound, and attained a nearer prospectof the sky, than throughout all the misery which had kept himgrovelling on the earth. Of a deeply religious temperament,there was inevitably a tinge of the devotional in his mood.

"Do I feel joy again?" cried he, wondering at himself."Methought the germ of it was dead in me! Oh, Hester, thou artmy better angel! I seem to have flung myself--sick, sin-stained,and sorrow-blackened--down upon these forest leaves, and to haverisen up all made anew, and with new powers to glorify Him thathath been merciful! This is already the better life! Why did wenot find it sooner?"

"Let us not look back," answered Hester Prynne. "The past isgone! Wherefore should we linger upon it now? See! With thissymbol I undo it all, and make it as if it had never been!"

So speaking, she undid the clasp that fastened the scarletletter, and, taking it from her bosom, threw it to a distanceamong the withered leaves. The mystic token alighted on thehither verge of the stream. With a hand's-breadth furtherflight, it would have fallen into the water, and have given thelittle brook another woe to carry onward, besides theunintelligible tale which it still kept murmuring about. Butthere lay the embroidered letter, glittering like a lost jewel,which some ill-fated wanderer might pick up, and thenceforth behaunted by strange phantoms of guilt, sinkings of the heart, andunaccountable misfortune.

The stigma gone, Hester heaved a long, deep sigh, in which theburden of shame and anguish departed from her spirit. Oexquisite relief! She had not known the weight until she feltthe freedom! By another impulse, she took off the formal capthat confined her hair, and down it fell upon her shoulders,dark and rich, with at once a shadow and a light in itsabundance, and imparting the charm of softness to her features.There played around her mouth, and beamed out of her eyes, aradiant and tender smile, that seemed gushing from the veryheart of womanhood. A crimson flush was glowing on her cheek,that had been long so pale. Her sex, her youth, and the wholerichness of her beauty, came back from what men call theirrevocable past, and clustered themselves with her maiden hope,and a happiness before unknown, within the magic circle of thishour. And, as if the gloom of the earth and sky had been but theeffluence of these two mortal hearts, it vanished with theirsorrow. All at once, as with a sudden smile of heaven, forthburst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscureforest, gladdening each green leaf, transmuting the yellowfallen ones to gold, and gleaming adown the gray trunks of thesolemn trees. The objects that had made a shadow hitherto,embodied the brightness now. The course of the little brookmight be traced by its merry gleam afar into the wood's heart ofmystery, which had become a mystery of joy.

Such was the sympathy of Nature--that wild, heathen Nature ofthe forest, never subjugated by human law, nor illumined byhigher truth--with the bliss of these two spirits! Love, whethernewly-born, or aroused from a death-like slumber, must alwayscreate a sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, thatit overflows upon the outward world. Had the forest still keptits gloom, it would have been bright in Hester's eyes, andbright in Arthur Dimmesdale's!

Hester looked at him with a thrill of another joy.

"Thou must know Pearl!" said she. "Our little Pearl! Thou hastseen her--yes, I know it!--but thou wilt see her now with othereyes. She is a strange child! I hardly comprehend her! But thouwilt love her dearly, as I do, and wilt advise me how to dealwith her!"

"Dost thou think the child will be glad to know me?" asked theminister, somewhat uneasily. "I have long shrunk from children,because they often show a distrust--a backwardness to befamiliar with me. I have even been afraid of little Pearl!"

"Ah, that was sad!" answered the mother. "But she will lovethee dearly, and thou her. She is not far off. I will call her.Pearl! Pearl!"

"I see the child," observed the minister. "Yonder she is,standing in a streak of sunshine, a good way off, on the otherside of the brook. So thou thinkest the child will love me?"

Hester smiled, and again called to Pearl, who was visible atsome distance, as the minister had described her, like abright-apparelled vision in a sunbeam, which fell down upon herthrough an arch of boughs. The ray quivered to and fro, makingher figure dim or distinct--now like a real child, now like achild's spirit--as the splendour went and came again. She heardher mother's voice, and approached slowly through the forest.

Pearl had not found the hour pass wearisomely while her mothersat talking with the clergyman. The great black forest--stern asit showed itself to those who brought the guilt and troubles ofthe world into its bosom--became the playmate of the lonelyinfant, as well as it knew how. Sombre as it was, it put on thekindest of its moods to welcome her. It offered her thepartridge-berries, the growth of the preceding autumn, butripening only in the spring, and now red as drops of blood uponthe withered leaves. These Pearl gathered, and was pleased withtheir wild flavour. The small denizens of the wilderness hardlytook pains to move out of her path. A partridge, indeed, with abrood of ten behind her, ran forward threateningly, but soonrepented of her fierceness, and clucked to her young ones not tobe afraid. A pigeon, alone on a low branch, allowed Pearl tocome beneath, and uttered a sound as much of greeting as alarm.A squirrel, from the lofty depths of his domestic tree,chattered either in anger or merriment--for the squirrel is sucha choleric and humorous little personage, that it is hard todistinguish between his moods--so he chattered at the child, andflung down a nut upon her head. It was a last year's nut, andalready gnawed by his sharp tooth. A fox, startled from hissleep by her light footstep on the leaves, looked inquisitivelyat Pearl, as doubting whether it were better to steal off, orrenew his nap on the same spot. A wolf, it is said--but here thetale has surely lapsed into the improbable--came up and smelt ofPearl's robe, and offered his savage head to be patted by herhand. The truth seems to be, however, that the mother-forest,and these wild things which it nourished, all recognised akindred wilderness in the human child.

And she was gentler here than in the grassy-margined streets ofthe settlement, or in her mother's cottage. The Bowers appearedto know it, and one and another whispered as she passed, "Adornthyself with me, thou beautiful child, adorn thyself withme!"--and, to please them, Pearl gathered the violets, andanemones, and columbines, and some twigs of the freshest green,which the old trees held down before her eyes. With these shedecorated her hair and her young waist, and became a nymphchild, or an infant dryad, or whatever else was in closestsympathy with the antique wood. In such guise had Pearl adornedherself, when she heard her mother's voice, and came slowlyback.

Slowly--for she saw the clergyman!