“Fie, woman—­fie!” cried the old lady, shaking her finger at Hester.  “Dost thou think I have been to the forest so many times, and have yet no skill to judge who else has been there?  Yea, though no leaf of the wild garlands which they wore while they danced be left in their hair!  I know thee, Hester, for I behold the token.  We may all see it in the sunshine! and it glows like a red flame in the dark.  Thou wearest it openly, so there need be no question about that.  But this minister!  Let me tell thee in thine ear!  When the Black Man sees one of his own servants, signed and sealed, so shy of owning to the bond as is the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, he hath a way of ordering matters so that the mark shall be disclosed, in open daylight, to the eyes of all the world!  What is that the minister seeks to hide, with his hand always over his heart?  Ha, Hester Prynne?”

“What is it, good Mistress Hibbins?” eagerly asked little Pearl.  “Hast thou seen it?”

“No matter, darling!” responded Mistress Hibbins, making Pearl a profound reverence.  “Thou thyself wilt see it, one time or another.  They say, child, thou art of the lineage of the Prince of Air!  Wilt thou ride with me some fine night to see thy father?  Then thou shalt know wherefore the minister keeps his hand over his heart!”

Laughing so shrilly that all the market-place could hear her, the weird old gentlewoman took her departure.

By this time the preliminary prayer had been offered in the meeting-house, and the accents of the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale were heard commencing his discourse.  An irresistible feeling kept Hester near the spot.  As the sacred edifice was too much thronged to admit another auditor, she took up her position close beside the scaffold of the pillory.  It was in sufficient proximity to bring the whole sermon to her ears, in the shape of an indistinct but varied murmur and flow of the minister’s very peculiar voice.

This vocal organ was in itself a rich endowment, insomuch that a listener, comprehending nothing of the language in which the preacher spoke, might still have been swayed to and fro by the mere tone and cadence.  Like all other music, it breathed passion and pathos, and emotions high or tender, in a tongue native to the human heart, wherever educated.  Muffled as the sound was by its passage through the church walls, Hester Prynne listened with such intenseness, and sympathized so intimately, that the sermon had throughout a meaning for her, entirely apart from its indistinguishable words.  These, perhaps, if more distinctly heard, might have been only a grosser medium, and have clogged the spiritual sense.  Now she caught the low undertone, as of the wind sinking down to repose itself; then ascended with it, as it rose through progressive gradations of sweetness and power, until its volume seemed to envelop her with an atmosphere of awe and solemn grandeur.  And yet, majestic as the voice sometimes became,