but none, we apprehend, so pitiably weak; no evidence at once so slight and irrefragible of a subtle disease that had long since begun to eat into the real substance of his character. No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

The excitement of Mr. Dimmesdale's feelings, as he returned from his interview with Hester, lent him unaccustomed physical energy, and hurried him townward at a rapid pace. As he drew near the town he took an impression of change from the series of familiar objects that presented themselves. It seemed not yesterday, not one, not two, but many days or even years ago, since he had quitted them. There was indeed each former trace of the street, as he remembered it, and all the peculiarities of the houses, with the due multitude of gables, peaks, and a weathercock at every point where his memory suggested one. Not the less, however, came this importunately recurring sense of change. The same was true as regarded the acquaintances whom he met, and all the well-known shapes of human life about the little town. They looked neither older nor younger now; the beards of the aged were no whiter, nor could the creeping babe of yesterday walk on his feet to-day. It was impossible to describe in what respect they differed from the individuals on whom he had so recently bestowed a parting glance; and yet the minister's deepest sense seemed to inform him of their mutability. A similar impression struck him most remarkably as he passed under the walls of his own church. The edifice had so very strange and yet so familiar an aspect, that Mr. Dimmesdale's mind vibrated between two ideas either that he had seen it only in a dream hitherto, or that he was merely dreaming about it now.

This phenomenon, in the various shapes which it assumed, indicated no external change, but so sudden and important change in the spectator of the familiar scene, that the intervening space of a single day had operated upon his consciousness like the lapse of years. The minister's own will, and Hester's will, and the fate that grew between them, had wrought this transformation. It was the same town as heretofore; but the same VOL. XIII.-2

minister returned not from the forest. He might have said to the friends who greeted him, "I am not the man for whom you take me! I left him yonder in the forest, withdrawn into a secret dell, by a mossy tree-trunk, and near a melancholy brook! Go seek your minister, and see if his emaciated figure, his thin cheek, his white, heavy, pain-wrinkled brow, be not flung down there, like a cast-off garment!" His friends, no doubt, would still have insisted with him, "Thou art thyself the man!"— but the error would have been their own, not his.

Before Mr. Dimmesdale reached home, his inner man gave him other evidences of a revolution in the sphere of thought and feeling. In truth, nothing short of a total change of dynasty and moral code in that interior kingdom, was adequate to account for the impulses now communicated to the unfortunate and startled minister. At every step he was impelled to do some strange, wild, wicked thing or other, with a sense that it would be at once involuntary and intentional; in spite of himself, yet growing out of a profounder self than that which opposed the impulse.

For instance: He met one of his own deacons. The good old man addressed him with the paternal affection and patriarchal privilege which his venerable age, his upright and holy character, and his station in the Church, entitled him to use; and, conjoined with this, the deep, almost worshipping respect which the minister's professional and private claims alike demanded. Never was there a more beautiful example of how the majesty of age and wisdom may comport with the obeisance and respect enjoined upon it, as from a lower social rank and inferior order of endowment, toward a higher. Now during a conversation of some two or three moments between the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale and this excellent and hoary-headed deacon, it was only by the most careful self-control that the former could refrain from uttering certain blasphemous suggestions that rose into his mind respecting the communion-supper. He absolutely trembled, and turned pale as ashes, lest his tongue should wag itself in utterances of those horrible matters, and plead his own consent for so doing, without his having fairly given it. And even with this terror in his heart, he could hardly avoid laughing to imagine how

the sanctified old patriarchal deacon would have been petrified by his minister's impiety.

Again, another incident of the same nature: Hurrying along the street, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale encountered the eldest female member of his Church; a most pious and exemplary old dame, poor, widowed, lonely, and with a heart as full of reminiscences about her dead husband and children, and her dead friends of long ago, as a burial ground is full of storied gravestones. Yet all this, which would else have been such heavy sorrow, was made almost a solemn joy to her devout old soul, by religious consolations and the truths of Scripture wherewith she had fed herself continually for more than thirty years. And since Mr. Dimmesdale had taken her in charge the good granddame's chief earthly comfort-which unless it had been likewise a heavenly comfort could have been none at all— was to meet her pastor, whether casually or of set purpose, and be refreshed with a word of warm, fragrant, heaven-breathing gospel truth from his beloved lips into her dulled but rapturously attentive ear. But, on this occasion, up to the moment of putting his lips to the old woman's ear, Mr. Dimmesdale, as the great enemy of souls would have it, could recall no text of Scripture, or aught else, except a brief, pithy, and, as it then appeared to him, unanswerable argument against the immortality of the human soul. The instilment thereof into her mind would probably have caused this aged sister to drop down dead at once, as by the effect of an intensely poisonous infection. What he really did whisper the minister could never afterward recollect. There was perhaps a fortunate disorder in his utterance, which failed to impart any distinct idea to the good widow's comprehension, or which Providence interpreted after a method of its own. Assuredly, as the minister looked back, he beheld an expression of divine gratitude and ecstasy that seemed like the shine of the Celestial City on her face, so wrinkled and ashy pale.

Again, a third instance: After parting from the old church-member, he met the youngest sister of them all. It was a maiden newly-won-and won by the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale's own sermon, on the Sabbath after his vigil to barter the transitory pleasures of the world

for the heavenly hope that was to assume brighter substance as life grew dark around her, and which would gild the utter gloom with final glory. She was fair and pure as a lily that had bloomed in Paradise. The minister knew well that he was himself enshrined within the stainless sanctity of her heart, which hung its snowy curtains about his image, imparting to religion the warmth of love, and to love a religious purity. Satan, that afternoon, had surely led the poor young girl away from her mother's side, and thrown her into the pathway of this sorely tempted, or-shall we not say? this lost and desperate man. As she drew near, the archfiend whispered him to condense into a small compass and drop into her tender bosom a germ of evil that would be sure to blossom darkly soon, and bear black fruit betimes. Such was his sense of power over this virgin's soul, trusting him as she did, that the minister felt potent to blight all the field of innocence with but one wicked look, and develop all its opposite with but a word. So-with a mightier struggle than he had yet sustained-he held his Geneva cloak before his face, and hurried onward, making no sign of recognition, and leaving the young sister to digest his rudeness as she might. She ransacked her conscience, which was full of harmless little matters-like her pocket or her workbag and took herself to task, poor thing! for a thousand imaginary faults; and went about her household duties with swollen eyelids the next morning.

Before the minister had time to celebrate his victory over this last temptation, he was conscious of another impulse, more ludicrous, and almost as horrible. It was to stop short in the road, and teach some very wicked words to a knot of little Puritan children who were playing there, and had but just begun to talk. Denying himself this freak, as unworthy of his cloth, he met a drunken seaman, one of the ship's crew from the Spanish Main. And here, since he had so valiantly forborne all other wickedness, poor Mr. Dimmesdale longed at least to shake hands with the tarry blackguard, and recreate himself with a few improper jests, such as dissolute sailors so abound with, and a volley of good, round, and heaven-defying oaths! It was not so much a better principle as partly his natural good taste, and still

more his buckrammed habit of clerical decorum, that carried him through the latter crisis.

"What is it that haunts and tempts me thus?" cried the minister to himself, at length, pausing in the street, and striking his hand against his forehead. "Am I mad? or am I given over utterly to the fiend? Did I make a contract with him in the forest, and sign it with my blood? And does he now summon to its fulfilment by suggesting the performance of every wickedness which his most foul imagination can conceive?"

At the moment when the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale thus communed with himself, and struck his forehead with his hand, old Mistress Hibbins, the reputed witchlady, is said to have been passing by. She made a very grand appearance; having on a high head-dress, a rich gown of velvet, and a ruff done up with the famous yellow starch, of which Ann Turner, her especial friend, had taught her the secret, before this last good lady had been hanged for Sir Thomas Overbury's murder. Whether the witch had read the minister's thoughts or no, she came to a full stop, looked shrewdly into his face, smiled craftily, and, though little given to converse with clergymen began a conversation.

So, Reverend Sir, you have made a visit into the forest," observed the witch-lady, nodding her high headdress at him. "The next time I pray you to allow me only a fair warning, and I shall be proud to bear you company. Without taking overmuch upon myself, my good word will go far toward gaining any strange gentleman a fair reception from yonder potentate you wot of."

"I profess, Madam," answered the clergyman, with a grave obeisance such as the lady's rank demanded, and his good breeding made imperative, "I profess, on my conscience and character, that I am utterly bewildered as touching the purport of your words. I went not into the forest to seek a potentate; neither do I at any future time design a visit thither with a view to gaining favor of such personage. My one sufficient reason was to greet that pious friend of mine, the Apostle Eliot, and rejoice with him over the many precious souls he hath won from heathendom."

"Ha, ha, ha!" cackled the old witch-lady, still nod