always keep his hand over his heart?" inquired Pearl.

"Foolish child, what a question is that!" exclaimed her mother. "Come
and ask his blessing!"

But, whether influenced by the jealousy that seems instinctive with
every petted child towards a dangerous rival, or from whatever caprice
of her freakish nature, Pearl would show no favor to the clergyman. It
was only by an exertion of force that her mother brought her up to
him, hanging back, and manifesting her reluctance by odd grimaces; of
which, ever since her babyhood, she had possessed a singular variety,
and could transform her mobile physiognomy into a series of different
aspects, with a new mischief in them, each and all. The
minister--painfully embarrassed, but hoping that a kiss might prove a
talisman to admit him into the child's kindlier regards--bent forward,
and impressed one on her brow. Hereupon, Pearl broke away from her
mother, and, running to the brook, stooped over it, and bathed her
forehead, until the unwelcome kiss was quite washed off, and diffused
through a long lapse of the gliding water. She then remained apart,
silently watching Hester and the clergyman; while they talked
together, and made such arrangements as were suggested by their new
position, and the purposes soon to be fulfilled.

And now this fateful interview had come to a close. The dell was to be
left a solitude among its dark, old trees, which, with their
multitudinous tongues, would whisper long of what had passed there,
and no mortal be the wiser. And the melancholy brook would add this
other tale to the mystery with which its little heart was already
overburdened, and whereof it still kept up a murmuring babble, with
not a whit more cheerfulness of tone than for ages heretofore.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

XX.

THE MINISTER IN A MAZE.

As the minister departed, in advance of Hester Prynne and little
Pearl, he threw a backward glance; half expecting that he should
discover only some faintly traced features or outline of the mother
and the child, slowly fading into the twilight of the woods. So great
a vicissitude in his life could not at once be received as real. But
there was Hester, clad in her gray robe, still standing beside the
tree-trunk, which some blast had overthrown a long antiquity ago, and
which time had ever since been covering with moss, so that these two
fat