The Scarlet Letter

"Never," replied Hester Prynne, looking, not at Mr. Wilson, but

into the deep and troubled eyes of the younger clergyman. "It is

too deeply branded. Ye cannot take it off. And would that I

might endure his agony as well as mine!"

"Speak, woman!" said another voice, coldly and sternly,

proceeding from the crowd about the scaffold, "Speak; and give

your child a father!"

"I will not speak!" answered Hester, turning pale as death, but

responding to this voice, which she too surely recognised. "And

my child must seek a heavenly father; she shall never know an

earthly one!"

"She will not speak!" murmured Mr. Dimmesdale, who, leaning over

the balcony, with his hand upon his heart, had awaited the

result of his appeal. He now drew back with a long respiration.

"Wondrous strength and generosity of a woman's heart! She will

not speak!"

Discerning the impracticable state of the poor culprit's mind,

the elder clergyman, who had carefully prepared himself for the

occasion, addressed to the multitude a discourse on sin, in all

its branches, but with continual reference to the ignominious

letter. So forcibly did he dwell upon this symbol, for the hour

or more during which his periods were rolling over the people's

heads, that it assumed new terrors in their imagination, and

seemed to derive its scarlet hue from the flames of the infernal

pit. Hester Prynne, meanwhile, kept her place upon the pedestal

of shame, with glazed eyes, and an air of weary indifference.

She had borne that morning all that nature could endure; and as

her temperament was not of the order that escapes from too

intense suffering by a swoon, her spirit could only shelter

itself beneath a stony crust of insensibility, while the

faculties of animal life remained entire. In this state, the

voice of the preacher thundered remorselessly, but unavailingly,

upon her ears. The infant, during the latter portion of her

ordeal, pierced the air with its wailings and screams; she

strove to hush it mechanically, but seemed scarcely to

sympathise with its trouble. With the same hard demeanour, she

was led back to prison, and vanished from the public gaze within

its iron-clamped portal. It was whispered by those who peered

after her that the scarlet letter threw a lurid gleam along the

dark passage-way of the interior.