they should
plunge into some gloomier shade. There was no other attribute that so
much impressed her with a sense of new and untransmitted vigor in
Pearl's nature, as this never-failing vivacity of spirits; she had not
the disease of sadness, which almost all children, in these latter
days, inherit, with the scrofula, from the troubles of their
ancestors. Perhaps this too was a disease, and but the reflex of the
wild energy with which Hester had fought against her sorrows, before
Pearl's birth. It was certainly a doubtful charm, imparting a hard,
metallic lustre to the child's character. She wanted--what some people
want throughout life--a grief that should deeply touch her, and thus
humanize and make her capable of sympathy. But there was time enough
yet for little Pearl.

"Come, my child!" said Hester, looking about her from the spot where
Pearl had stood still in the sunshine. "We will sit down a little way
within the wood, and rest ourselves."

"I am not aweary, mother," replied the little girl. "But you may sit
down, if you will tell me a story meanwhile."

"A story, child!" said Hester. "And about what?"

"O, a story about the Black Man," answered Pearl, taking hold of her
mother's gown, and looking up, half earnestly, half mischievously,
into her face. "How he haunts this forest, and carries a book with
him,--a big, heavy book, with iron clasps; and how this ugly Black Man
offers his book and an iron pen to everybody that meets him here among
the trees; and they are to write their names with their own blood. And
then he sets his mark on their bosoms! Didst thou ever meet the Black
Man, mother?"

"And who told you this story, Pearl?" asked her mother, recognizing a
common superstition of the period.

"It was the old dame in the chimney-corner, at the house where you
watched last night," said the child. "But she fancied me asleep while
she was talking of it. She said that a thousand and a thousand people
had met him here, and had written in his book, and have his mark on
them. And that ugly-tempered lady, old Mistress Hibbins, was one. And,
mother, the old dame said that this scarlet letter was the Black Man's
mark on thee, and that it glows like a red flame when thou meetest
him at midnight, here in the dark wood. Is it true, mother? And dost
thou go to meet him in the night-time?"

"Didst thou ever awake, and find thy mother gone?" asked Hester.

"Not that I remember," said the child. "If thou fearest t