fiend at his
elbow! A mortal man, with once a human heart, has become a fiend for
his especial torment!"

The unfortunate physician, while uttering these words, lifted his
hands with a look of horror, as if he had beheld some frightful shape,
which he could not recognize, usurping the place of his own image in
a glass. It was one of those moments--which sometimes occur only at
the interval of years--when a man's moral aspect is faithfully
revealed to his mind's eye. Not improbably, he had never before viewed
himself as he did now.

"Hast thou not tortured him enough?" said Hester, noticing the old
man's look. "Has he not paid thee all?"

"No!--no!--He has but increased the debt!" answered the physician; and
as he proceeded his manner lost its fiercer characteristics, and
subsided into gloom. "Dost thou remember me, Hester, as I was nine
years agone? Even then, I was in the autumn of my days, nor was it the
early autumn. But all my life had been made up of earnest, studious,
thoughtful, quiet years, bestowed faithfully for the increase of mine
own knowledge, and faithfully, too, though this latter object was but
casual to the other,--faithfully for the advancement of human welfare.
No life had been more peaceful and innocent than mine; few lives so
rich with benefits conferred. Dost thou remember me? Was I not, though
you might deem me cold, nevertheless a man thoughtful for others,
craving little for himself,--kind, true, just, and of constant, if not
warm affections? Was I not all this?"

"All this, and more," said Hester.

"And what am I now?" demanded he, looking into her face, and
permitting the whole evil within him to be written on his features. "I
have already told thee what I am! A fiend! Who made me so?"

"It was myself!" cried Hester, shuddering. "It was I, not less than
he. Why hast thou not avenged thyself on me?"

"I have left thee to the scarlet letter," replied Roger Chillingworth.
"If that have not avenged me, I can do no more!"

He laid his finger on it, with a smile.

"It has avenged thee!" answered Hester Prynne.

"I judged no less," said the physician. "And now, what wouldst thou
with me touching this man?"

"I must reveal the secret," answered Hester, firmly. "He must discern
thee in thy true character. What may be the result, I know not. But
this long debt of confidence, due from me to him, whose bane and ruin
I have been, shall at length be paid. So far as concerns the overthrow
or