"And who told you this story, Pearl," asked her mother,
recognising a common superstition of the period.
"It was the old dame in the chimney corner, at the house where
you watched last night," said the child. "But she fancied me
asleep while she was talking of it. She said that a thousand and
a thousand people had met him here, and had written in his book,
and have his mark on them. And that ugly tempered lady, old
Mistress Hibbins, was one. And, mother, the old dame said that
this scarlet letter was the Black Man's mark on thee, and that
it glows like a red flame when thou meetest him at midnight,
here in the dark wood. Is it true, mother? And dost thou go to
meet him in the nighttime?"
"Didst thou ever awake and find thy mother gone?" asked Hester.
"Not that I remember," said the child. "If thou fearest to leave
me in our cottage, thou mightest take me along with thee. I
would very gladly go! But, mother, tell me now! Is there such a
Black Man? And didst thou ever meet him? And is this his mark?"
"Wilt thou let me be at peace, if I once tell thee?" asked her
mother.
"Yes, if thou tellest me all," answered Pearl.
"Once in my life I met the Black Man!" said her mother. "This
scarlet letter is his mark!"
Thus conversing, they entered sufficiently deep into the wood to
secure themselves from the observation of any casual passenger
along the forest track. Here they sat down on a luxuriant heap
of moss; which at some epoch of the preceding century, had been
a gigantic pine, with its roots and trunk in the darksome shade,
and its head aloft in the upper atmosphere. It was a little dell
where they had seated themselves, with a leaf-strewn bank rising
gently on either side, and a brook flowing through the midst,
over a bed of fallen and drowned leaves. The trees impending
over it had flung down great branches from time to time, which
choked up the current, and compelled it to form eddies and black
depths at some points; while, in its swifter and livelier
passages there appeared a channel-way of pebbles, and brown,
sparkling sand. Letting the eyes follow along the course of the
stream, they could catch the reflected light from its water, at
some short distance within the forest, but soon lost all traces
of it amid the bewilderment of tree-trunks and underbrush, and
here and there a huge rock covered over with gray lichens. All
these giant trees and boulders of granite seemed intent on
making a mystery of the course of this small brook; fearing,
perhaps, that, with its never-ceasing loquacity, it should
whisper tales out of the heart of the old forest whence it
flowed, or mirror its revelations on the smooth surface of a
pool. Continually, indeed, as it stole onward, the streamlet
kept up a babble, kind, quiet, soothing, but melancholy, like
the voice of a young child that was spending its infancy without
playfulness, and knew not how to be merry among sad acquaintance
and events of sombre hue.