t miracle is this!
A stigma! Aye! a stigma! the letter "A"
In blood suffused! The counterpart of that
Which Hester wears, but palpitating here
In life! This is beyond my skill.
Ah! David! David! Thou art the man! Thou wouldst
Have set me in the hot forefront of battle
Hadst thou but known me as Uriah!
Bah!
Why, what a brainless dullard have I been,
To see this pretty puff-ball of a preacher
Wax large before mine eyes in righteous husk--
And think him whole within--when but a touch,
But one, had aired his rottenness!
Oh! dotard that I am! blind, deaf and stupid!
It takes a miracle to make me see
What lay before me open. He did take
Her part; ever professed himself her friend;
And at her trial fell in trance. What more?
He is the man! He is the man!
Now ends our game of hoodman blind; oh, I
Was warm, so very warm at times, so hot,
Did almost touch thee; yet I knew thee not
For him I sought. Thou cunning hypocrite!
It must be I am fitted to my state,
Dull, trusting and incapable;
Or else--why surely I'm a fool.--
Had I been here when Hester bore her child,
I would have fondly dreamed it was mine own;
Put on the unearned pride that old men wear
When their young wives bear children.
A pretty baby, sir! My grandchild?--No;
Mine own; my very own! Nay, wrong me not;
I'm not so old--not so damned old after all!
A ghe! a ghoo! Are not the eyes like mine?--
Yea, would have dandled it upon my knee,
And coddled each succeeding drop, as though
My fires had distilled them.
But--now I know--my knowledge must be hid.
Back shirt! cover blazoned infamy
And let the whited front still hide from man
The sepulchre of crime that festers here.
He will not wake within an hour. I'll go
Inform the Governor he sleeps, and have
Him order none disturb his pious rest.
Then I'll return and calmly probe his soul.
Sleep on! Sleep on! [_Exit Roger._

SCENE II.--_Another part of the garden. Enter alone, DIGGORY._

_Diggory._ If there be no true charm but it hath a touch of folly in
it, this one must be most potent. Now a wise man would not think
there's that virtue in a bit of grease, a jingling rhyme, and a hair
cut, that one might thereby win a woman's love--but the wise are
fools in love. I have here the lard of three bears--one more than
the old adage of "bear and forbear"--and with it I am to anoint my
he