her's voice, and came slowly
back.

Slowly; for she saw the clergyman.

[Illustration]

XIX.

THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE.

"Thou wilt love her dearly," repeated Hester Prynne, as she and the
minister sat watching little Pearl. "Dost thou not think her
beautiful? And see with what natural skill she has made those simple
flowers adorn her! Had she gathered pearls, and diamonds, and rubies,
in the wood, they could not have become her better. She is a splendid
child! But I know whose brow she has!"

"Dost thou know, Hester," said Arthur Dimmesdale, with an unquiet
smile, "that this dear child, tripping about always at thy side, hath
caused me many an alarm? Methought--O Hester, what a thought is that,
and how terrible to dread it!--that my own features were partly
repeated in her face, and so strikingly that the world might see them!
But she is mostly thine!"

"No, no! Not mostly!" answered the mother, with a tender smile. "A
little longer, and thou needest not to be afraid to trace whose child
she is. But how strangely beautiful she looks, with those
wild-flowers in her hair! It is as if one of the fairies, whom we left
in our dear old England, had decked her out to meet us."

It was with a feeling which neither of them had ever before
experienced, that they sat and watched Pearl's slow advance. In her
was visible the tie that united them. She had been offered to the
world, these seven years past, as the living hieroglyphic, in which
was revealed the secret they so darkly sought to hide,--all written in
this symbol,--all plainly manifest,--had there been a prophet or
magician skilled to read the character of flame! And Pearl was the
oneness of their being. Be the foregone evil what it might, how could
they doubt that their earthly lives and future destinies were
conjoined, when they beheld at once the material union, and the
spiritual idea, in whom they met, and were to dwell immortally
together? Thoughts like these--and perhaps other thoughts, which they
did not acknowledge or define--threw an awe about the child, as she
came onward.

"Let her see nothing strange--no passion nor eagerness--in thy way of
accosting her," whispered Hester. "Our Pearl is a fitful and fantastic
little elf, sometimes. Especially, she is seldom tolerant of emotion,
when she does not fully comprehend the why and wherefore. But the
child hath st