ts about his
chair, and ministers of religion.

Mr. John Wilson, the eldest of these clergymen, first spake, and then
urged a younger minister, Mr. Dimmesdale, to exhort the prisoner to
repentance and to confession. "Speak to the woman, my brother," said Mr.
Wilson.

The Rev. Mr. Dimmesdale was a man of high native gifts, whose eloquence
and religious fervour had already wide eminence in his profession. He
bent his head, in silent prayer, as it seemed, and then came forward.

"Hester Prynne," said he, "if thou feelest it to be for thy soul's
peace, I charge thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and
fellow-sufferer. Be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for
him, for, believe me, though he were to step down from a high place, and
stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so
than to hide a guilty heart through life."

Hester only shook her head.

"She will not speak," murmured Mr. Dimmesdale. "Wondrous strength and
generosity of a woman's heart!"

Hester Prynne kept her place upon the pedestal of shame with an air of
weary indifference. With the same hard demeanour she was led back to
prison.

That night the child at her boson writhed in convulsions of pain, and
the jailer brought in a physician, whom he announced as Mr. Roger
Chillingworth, and who was none other than the stranger whom Hester had
noticed in the crowd.

He took the infant in his arms and administered a draught, and its moans
and convulsive tossings gradually ceased.

"Hester," said he, when the jailer had withdrawn, "I ask not wherefore
thou hast fallen into the pit. It was my folly and thy weakness. What
had I--a man of thought, the bookworm of great libraries--to do with
youth and beauty like thine own? I might have known that in my long
absence this would happen."

"I have greatly wronged thee," murmured Hester.

"We have wronged each other," he answered. "But I shall seek this man
whose name thou wilt not reveal, as I seek truth in books, and sooner or
later he must needs be mine. I shall contrive naught against his life.
Let him live! Not the less shall he be mine. One thing, thou that wast
my wife, I ask. Thou hast kept his name secret. Keep, likewise, mine.
Let thy husband be to the world as one already dead, and breathe not the
secret, above all, to the man thou wottest of?"

"I will keep thy secret, as I have his."

_II.--A Pearl of Great Price_

When her prison-door was th