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.

“Oh, brook!  Oh, foolish and tiresome little brook!” cried Pearl, after listening awhile to its talk, “Why art thou so sad?  Pluck up a spirit, and do not be all the time sighing and murmuring!”

But the brook, in the course of its little lifetime among the forest trees, had gone through so solemn an experience that it could not help talking about it, and seemed to have nothing else to say.  Pearl resembled the brook, inasmuch as the current of her life gushed from a well-spring as mysterious, and had flowed through scenes shadowed as heavily with gloom.  But, unlike the little stream, she danced and sparkled, and prattled airily along her course.

“What does this sad little brook say, mother?” inquired she.

“If thou hadst a sorrow of thine own, the brook might tell thee of it,” answered her mother, “even as it is telling me of mine.  But now, Pearl, I hear a footstep along the path, and the noise of one putting aside the branches.  I would have thee betake thyself to play, and leave me to speak with him that comes yonder.”

“Is it the Black Man?” asked Pearl.

“Wilt thou go and play, child?” repeated her mother, “But do not stray far into the wood.  And take heed that thou come at my first call.”

“Yes, mother,” answered Pearl, “But if it be the Black Man, wilt thou not let me stay a moment, and look at him, with his big book under his arm?”

“Go, silly child!” said her mother impatiently.  “It is no Black Man!  Thou canst see him now, through the trees.  It is the minister!”

“And so it is!” said the child.  “And, mother, he has his hand over his heart!  Is it because, when the minister wrote his name in the book, the Black Man set his mark in that place?  But why does he not wear it outside his bosom, as thou dost, mother?”

“Go now, child, and thou shalt tease me as thou wilt another time,” cried Hester Prynne.  “But do not stray far.  Keep where thou canst hear the babble of the brook.”

The child went singing away, following up the current of the brook, and striving to mingle a more lightsome cadence with its melancholy voice.  But the little stream would not be comforted, and still kept telling its unintelligible secret of some very mournful mystery that had happened—­or making a prophetic lamentation about something that was yet to happen—­within the verge of the dismal forest.  So Pearl, who had enough of shadow in her own little life, chose to break off all acquaintance with this repining brook.  She set herself, therefore, to gathering violets and wood-anemones, and some scarlet columbines that she found growing in the crevice of a high rock.