The Scarlet Letter

"Am I mad? or am I given over utterly to the fiend? Did I make

a contract with him in the forest, and sign it with my blood?

And does he now summon me to its fulfilment, by suggesting the

performance of every wickedness which his most foul imagination

can conceive?"

At the moment when the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale thus communed

with himself, and struck his forehead with his hand, old

Mistress Hibbins, the reputed witch-lady, is said to have been

passing by. She made a very grand appearance, having on a high

head-dress, a rich gown of velvet, and a ruff done up with the

famous yellow starch, of which Anne Turner, her especial friend,

had taught her the secret, before this last good lady had been

hanged for Sir Thomas Overbury's murder. Whether the witch had

read the minister's thoughts or no, she came to a full stop,

looked shrewdly into his face, smiled craftily, and--though

little given to converse with clergymen--began a conversation.

"So, reverend sir, you have made a visit into the forest,"

observed the witch-lady, nodding her high head-dress at him.

"The next time I pray you to allow me only a fair warning, and I

shall be proud to bear you company. Without taking overmuch upon

myself my good word will go far towards gaining any strange

gentleman a fair reception from yonder potentate you wot of."

"I profess, madam," answered the clergyman, with a grave

obeisance, such as the lady's rank demanded, and his own good

breeding made imperative--"I profess, on my conscience and

character, that I am utterly bewildered as touching the purport

of your words! I went not into the forest to seek a potentate,

neither do I, at any future time, design a visit thither, with a

view to gaining the favour of such personage. My one sufficient

object was to greet that pious friend of mine, the Apostle

Eliot, and rejoice with him over the many precious souls he hath

won from heathendom!"

"Ha, ha, ha!" cackled the old witch-lady, still nodding her high

head-dress at the minister. "Well, well! we must needs talk thus

in the daytime! You carry it off like an old hand! But at

midnight, and in the forest, we shall have other talk together!"

She passed on with her aged stateliness, but often turning back

her head and smiling at him, like one willing to recognise a

secret intimacy of connexion.

"Have I then sold myself," thought the minister, "to the fiend

whom, if men say true, this yellow-starched and velveted old hag

has chosen for her prince and master?"

The wretched minister! He had made a bargain very like it!

Tempted by a dream of happiness, he had yielded himself with

deliberate choice, as he had never done before, to what he knew

was deadly sin. And the infectious poison of that sin had been

thus rapidly diffused throughout his moral system. It had

stupefied all blessed impulses, and awakened into vivid life the

whole brotherhood of bad ones. Scorn, bitterness, unprovoked

malignity, gratuitous desire of ill, ridicule of whatever was

good and holy, all awoke to tempt, even while they frightened

him. And his encounter with old Mistress Hibbins, if it were a

real incident, did but show its sympathy and fellowship with

wicked mortals, and the world of perverted spirits.