twisted. This I now opened, and had the satisfaction to find,
recorded by the old Surveyor's pen, a reasonably complete explanation
of the whole affair. There were several foolscap sheets containing
many particulars respecting the life and conversation of one Hester
Prynne, who appeared to have been rather a noteworthy personage in the
view of our ancestors. She had flourished during the period between
the early days of Massachusetts and the close of the seventeenth
century. Aged persons, alive in the time of Mr. Surveyor Pue, and from
whose oral testimony he had made up his narrative, remembered her, in
their youth, as a very old, but not decrepit woman, of a stately and
solemn aspect. It had been her habit, from an almost immemorial date,
to go about the country as a kind of voluntary nurse, and doing
whatever miscellaneous good she might; taking upon herself, likewise,
to give advice in all matters, especially those of the heart; by which
means, as a person of such propensities inevitably must, she gained
from many people the reverence due to an angel, but, I should imagine,
was looked upon by others as an intruder and a nuisance. Prying
further into the manuscript, I found the record of other doings and
sufferings of this singular woman, for most of which the reader is
referred to the story entitled "THE SCARLET LETTER"; and it should be
borne carefully in mind, that the main facts of that story are
authorized and authenticated by the document of Mr. Surveyor Pue. The
original papers, together with the scarlet letter itself,--a most
curious relic,--are still in my possession, and shall be freely
exhibited to whomsoever, induced by the great interest of the
narrative, may desire a sight of them. I must not be understood as
affirming, that, in the dressing up of the tale, and imagining the
motives and modes of passion that influenced the characters who figure
in it, I have invariably confined myself within the limits of the old
Surveyor's half a dozen sheets of foolscap. On the contrary, I have
allowed myself, as to such points, nearly or altogether as much
license as if the facts had been entirely of my own invention. What I
contend for is the authenticity of the outline.

This incident recalled my mind, in some degree, to its old track.
There seemed to be here the groundwork of a tale. It impressed me as
if the ancient Surveyor, in his garb of a hundred years gone by, and
wearing his immortal wig,--which was buried