ngly from men, and walked among you with the mien of a
spirit, mournful, because so pure in a sinful world--and sad, because
he missed his heavenly kindred! Now, at the death-hour, he stands up
before you! He bids you look again at Hester's scarlet letter! He
tells you that, with all its mysterious horror, it is but the shadow
of what he bears on his own breast, and that even this, his own red
stigma, is no more than the type of what has seared his inmost heart!
Stand any here that question God's judgment on a sinner? Behold!
Behold a dreadful witness of it!"

With a convulsive motion, he tore away the ministerial band from his
breast. It was revealed! But it were irreverent to describe that
revelation. For an instant the gaze of the horror-stricken multitude
was concentrated on the ghastly miracle; while the minister stood,
with a flush of triumph in his face, as one who, in the crisis of
acutest pain, had won a victory. Then, down he sank upon the scaffold!
Hester partly raised him, and supported his head against her bosom.
Old Roger Chillingworth knelt down beside him, with a blank, dull
countenance, out of which the life seemed to have departed.

"Thou hast escaped me!" he repeated more than once. "Thou hast escaped
me!"

"May God forgive thee!" said the minister. "Thou, too, hast deeply
sinned!"

He withdrew his dying eyes from the old man, and fixt them on the
woman and the child.

"My little Pearl," said he, feebly--and there was a sweet and gentle
smile over his face, as of a spirit sinking into deep repose; nay, now
that the burden was removed, it seemed almost as if he would be
sportive with the child--"dear little Pearl, wilt thou kiss me now?
Thou wouldst not yonder, in the forest! But now thou wilt?"

Pearl kissed his lips. A spell was broken. The great scene of grief,
in which the wild infant bore a part, had developed all her
sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her father's cheek, they were
the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor
forever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it. Toward her
mother, too, Pearl's errand as a messenger of anguish was all
fulfilled.

"Hester," said the clergyman, "farewell!"

"Shall we not meet again?" whispered she, bending her face down close
to his. "Shall we not spend our immortal life together? Surely,
surely, we have ransomed one another with all this wo! Thou lookest
far into eternity, with those bright dying eyes! Then tell