es, with her maiden hope, and a happiness before
unknown, within the magic circle of this hour. And, as if the gloom of
the earth and sky had been but the effluence of these two mortal
hearts, it vanished with their sorrow. All at once, as with a sudden
smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into
the obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf, transmuting the yellow
fallen ones to gold, and gleaming adown the gray trunks of the solemn
trees. The objects that had made a shadow hitherto, embodied the
brightness now. The course of the little brook might be traced by its
merry gleam afar into the wood's heart of mystery, which had become a
mystery of joy.

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

Hester looked at him with the thrill of another joy.

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

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

"Ah, that was sad!" answered the mother. "But she will love thee
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 other side of the brook.
So thou thinkest the child will love me?"

Hester smiled, and again called to Pearl, who was visible, at some
distance, as the minister had described her, like a bright-apparelled
vision, in a sunbeam, which fell down upon her through an arch of
boughs. The ray quivered to and fro, making her figure dim or
distinct,--now like a real child, now like a child's spirit,--as the
splendor went and came again. She heard her mother's voice, and
approached slow