r," said the minister;
"and God is merciful! Let me now do the will which he hath made plain
before my sight. For, Hester, I am a dying man. So let me make haste
to take my shame upon me!"

Partly supported by Hester Prynne, and holding one hand of little
Pearl's, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale turned to the dignified and
venerable rulers; to the holy ministers, who were his brethren; to the
people, whose great heart was thoroughly appalled, yet overflowing
with tearful sympathy, as knowing that some deep life-matter--which,
if full of sin, was full of anguish and repentance likewise--was now
to be laid open to them. The sun, but little past its meridian, shone
down upon the clergyman, and gave a distinctness to his figure, as he
stood out from all the earth, to put in his plea of guilty at the bar
of Eternal Justice.

"People of New England!" cried he, with a voice that rose over them,
high, solemn, and majestic,--yet had always a tremor through it, and
sometimes a shriek, struggling up out of a fathomless depth of remorse
and woe,--"ye, that have loved me!--ye, that have deemed me
holy!--behold me here, the one sinner of the world! At last!--at
last!--I stand upon the spot where, seven years since, I should have
stood; here, with this woman, whose arm, more than the little strength
wherewith I have crept hitherward, sustains me, at this dreadful
moment, from grovelling down upon my face! Lo, the scarlet letter
which Hester wears! Ye have all shuddered at it! Wherever her walk
hath been,--wherever, so miserably burdened, she may have hoped to
find repose,--it hath cast a lurid gleam of awe and horrible
repugnance round about her. But there stood one in the midst of you,
at whose brand of sin and infamy ye have not shuddered!"

It seemed, at this point, as if the minister must leave the remainder
of his secret undisclosed. But he fought back the bodily
weakness,--and, still more, the faintness of heart,--that was striving
for the mastery with him. He threw off all assistance, and stepped
passionately forward a pace before the woman and the child.

"It was on him!" he continued, with a kind of fierceness; so
determined was he to speak out the whole. "God's eye beheld it! The
angels were forever pointing at it! The Devil knew it well, and
fretted it continually with the touch of his burning finger! But he
hid it cunningly from men, and walked among you with the mien of a
spirit, mournful, because so pure in a sinful wor