be trained up by her to righteousness,
to remind her and to teach her that, if she bring the child to heaven,
the child also will bring its parent thither. Let us then leave them as
Providence hath seen fit to place them!"

"You speak, my friend, with a strange earnestness," said old Roger
Chillingworth, smiling at him.

"He hath adduced such arguments that we will even leave the matter as it
now stands," said the governor. "So long, at least, as there shall be no
further scandal in the woman."

The affair being so satisfactorily concluded, Hester Prynne, with Pearl,
departed.

_III.--The Leach and his Patient_

It was at the solemn request of the deacons and elders of the church in
Boston that the Rev. Mr. Dimmesdale went to Roger Chillingworth for
professional advice. The young minister's health was failing, his cheek
was paler and thinner, and his voice more tremulous with every
successive Sabbath.

Roger Chillingworth scrutinised his patient carefully, and, accepted as
the medical adviser, determined to know the man before attempting to do
him good. He strove to go deep into his patient's bosom, delving among
his principles, and prying into his recollections.

After a time, at a hint from old Roger Chillingworth, the friends of Mr.
Dimmesdale effected an arrangement by which the two men were lodged in
the same house; so that every ebb and flow of the minister's life-tide
might pass under the watchful eye of his anxious physician.

Old Roger Chillingworth, throughout life, had been calm in temperament,
of kindly affections, and ever in the world a pure and upright man. He
had begun an investigation, as he imagined, with the severe integrity of
a judge, desirous only of truth. But, as he proceeded, a terrible
fascination seized the old man within its grip, and never set him free
again until he had done all its bidding. He now dug into the poor
clergyman's heart, like a miner searching for gold. "This man," the
physician would say to himself at times, "pure as they deem him, hath
inherited a strong animal nature from his father or his mother. Let us
dig a little farther in the direction of this vein."

Henceforth Roger Chillingworth became not a spectator only, but a chief
actor in the poor minister's inner world. And Mr. Dimmesdale grew to
look with unaccountable horror and hatred at the old physician.

And still the minister's fame and reputation for holiness increased,
even while he was tortured by