since recognized the impossibility that any mission of
divine and mysterious truth should be confided to a woman stained with
sin, bowed down with shame, or even burdened with a life-long sorrow.
The angel and apostle of the coming revelation must be a woman,
indeed, but lofty, pure, and beautiful; and wise, moreover, not
through dusky grief, but the ethereal medium of joy; and showing how
sacred love should make us happy, by the truest test of a life
successful to such an end!

So said Hester Prynne, and glanced her sad eyes downward at the
scarlet letter. And, after many, many years, a new grave was delved,
near an old and sunken one, in that burial-ground beside which King's
Chapel has since been built. It was near that old and sunken grave,
yet with a space between, as if the dust of the two sleepers had no
right to mingle. Yet one tombstone served for both. All around, there
were monuments carved with armorial bearings; and on this simple slab
of slate--as the curious investigator may still discern, and perplex
himself with the purport--there appeared the semblance of an engraved
escutcheon. It bore a device, a herald's wording of which might serve
for a motto and brief description of our now concluded legend; so
sombre is it, and relieved only by one ever-glowing point of light
gloomier than the shadow:--

"ON A FIELD, SABLE, THE LETTER A, GULES."

[Illustration]

Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

Obvious printer's errors have been corrected; for the details, see
below. Most illustrations have been linked to the larger versions; to
see the larger version, click on the illustration.

Typos fixed:

page 072--spelling normalized: changed 'midday' to 'mid-day'
page 132--inserted a missing closing quote after 'a child of her age'
page 137--spelling normalized: changed 'careworn' to 'care-worn'
page 147--typo fixed: changed 'physican' to 'physician'
page 171--typo fixed: changed 'vocies' to 'voices'
page 262--removed an extra closing quote after 'scarlet letter too!'
page 291--spelling normalized: changed 'birdlike' to 'bird-like'
page 300--typo fixed: changed 'intruments' to 'instruments'
page 306--spelling normalized: changed 'deathlike' to 'death-like'

End of Project Gutenberg's The Scarlet Letter, by