with a voice, to second and confirm the counsel which thou
hast heard. Speak out the name! That, and thy repentance, may avail to
take the scarlet letter off thy breast."

"Never!" replied Hester Prynne, looking, not at Mr. Wilson, but into
the deep and troubled eyes of the younger clergyman. "It is too deeply
branded. Ye cannot take it off. And would that I might endure his
agony, as well as mine!"

"Speak, woman!" said another voice, coldly and sternly, proceeding
from the crowd about the scaffold. "Speak; and give your child a
father!"

"I will not speak!" answered Hester, turning pale as death, but
responding to this voice, which she too surely recognized. "And my
child must seek a heavenly Father; she shall never know an earthly
one!"

"She will not speak!" murmured Mr. Dimmesdale, who, leaning over the
balcony, with his hand upon his heart, had awaited the result of his
appeal. He now drew back, with a long respiration. "Wondrous strength
and generosity of a woman's heart! She will not speak!"

[Illustration: "She was led back to Prison"]

Discerning the impracticable state of the poor culprit's mind, the
elder clergyman, who had carefully prepared himself for the occasion,
addressed to the multitude a discourse on sin, in all its branches,
but with continual reference to the ignominious letter. So forcibly
did he dwell upon this symbol, for the hour or more during which his
periods were rolling over the people's heads, that it assumed new
terrors in their imagination, and seemed to derive its scarlet hue
from the flames of the infernal pit. Hester Prynne, meanwhile, kept
her place upon the pedestal of shame, with glazed eyes, and an air of
weary indifference. She had borne, that morning, all that nature could
endure; and as her temperament was not of the order that escapes from
too intense suffering by a swoon, her spirit could only shelter itself
beneath a stony crust of insensibility, while the faculties of animal
life remained entire. In this state, the voice of the preacher
thundered remorselessly, but unavailingly, upon her ears. The infant,
during the latter portion of her ordeal, pierced the air with its
wailings and screams; she strove to hush it, mechanically, but seemed
scarcely to sympathize with its trouble. With the same hard demeanor,
she was led back to prison, and vanished from the public gaze within
its iron-clamped portal. It was whispered, by those who peered after
her, that the scarlet