ion of obedience, but because the quick
and mobile curiosity of her disposition was excited by the appearance
of these new personages.

[Illustration]

VIII.

THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER.

Governor Bellingham, in a loose gown and easy cap,--such as elderly
gentlemen loved to endue themselves with, in their domestic
privacy,--walked foremost, and appeared to be showing off his estate,
and expatiating on his projected improvements. The wide circumference
of an elaborate ruff, beneath his gray beard, in the antiquated
fashion of King James's reign, caused his head to look not a little
like that of John the Baptist in a charger. The impression made by his
aspect, so rigid and severe, and frost-bitten with more than autumnal
age, was hardly in keeping with the appliances of worldly enjoyment
wherewith he had evidently done his utmost to surround himself. But it
is an error to suppose that our grave forefathers--though accustomed
to speak and think of human existence as a state merely of trial and
warfare, and though unfeignedly prepared to sacrifice goods and life
at the behest of duty--made it a matter of conscience to reject such
means of comfort, or even luxury, as lay fairly within their grasp.
This creed was never taught, for instance, by the venerable pastor,
John Wilson, whose beard, white as a snow-drift, was seen over
Governor Bellingham's shoulder; while its wearer suggested that pears
and peaches might yet be naturalized in the New England climate, and
that purple grapes might possibly be compelled to nourish, against the
sunny garden-wall. The old clergyman, nurtured at the rich bosom of
the English Church, had a long-established and legitimate taste for
all good and comfortable things; and however stern he might show
himself in the pulpit, or in his public reproof of such transgressions
as that of Hester Prynne, still the genial benevolence of his private
life had won him warmer affection than was accorded to any of his
professional contemporaries.

Behind the Governor and Mr. Wilson came two other guests: one the
Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, whom the reader may remember as having
taken a brief and reluctant part in the scene of Hester Prynne's
disgrace; and, in close companionship with him, old Roger
Chillingworth, a person of great skill in physic, who, for two or
three years past, had been settled in the town. It