ed ones, with earth's heaviest burden on them, might there sit down
together, and find a single hour's rest and solace. And there was
Pearl, too, lightly dancing from the margin of the brook,--now that
the intrusive third person was gone,--and taking her old place by her
mother's side. So the minister had not fallen asleep and dreamed!

In order to free his mind from this indistinctness and duplicity of
impression, which vexed it with a strange disquietude, he recalled and
more thoroughly defined the plans which Hester and himself had
sketched for their departure. It had been determined between them,
that the Old World, with its crowds and cities, offered them a more
eligible shelter and concealment than the wilds of New England, or all
America, with its alternatives of an Indian wigwam, or the few
settlements of Europeans, scattered thinly along the seaboard. Not to
speak of the clergyman's health, so inadequate to sustain the
hardships of a forest life, his native gifts, his culture, and his
entire development, would secure him a home only in the midst of
civilization and refinement; the higher the state, the more delicately
adapted to it the man. In furtherance of this choice, it so happened
that a ship lay in the harbor; one of those questionable cruisers,
frequent at that day, which, without being absolutely outlaws of the
deep, yet roamed over its surface with a remarkable irresponsibility
of character. This vessel had recently arrived from the Spanish Main,
and, within three days' time, would sail for Bristol. Hester
Prynne--whose vocation, as a self-enlisted Sister of Charity, had
brought her acquainted with the captain and crew--could take upon
herself to secure the passage of two individuals and a child, with all
the secrecy which circumstances rendered more than desirable.

The minister had inquired of Hester, with no little interest, the
precise time at which the vessel might be expected to depart. It would
probably be on the fourth day from the present. "That is most
fortunate!" he had then said to himself. Now, why the Reverend Mr.
Dimmesdale considered it so very fortunate, we hesitate to reveal.
Nevertheless,--to hold nothing back from the reader,--it was because,
on the third day from the present, he was to preach the Election
Sermon; and, as such an occasion formed an honorable epoch in the life
of a New England clergyman, he could not have chanced upon a more
suitable mode and time of terminating his