Yet Mr. Dimmesdale would perhaps have seen this individual’s character more perfectly, if a certain morbidness, to which sick hearts are liable, had not rendered him suspicious of all mankind.  Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared.  He therefore still kept up a familiar intercourse with him, daily receiving the old physician in his study, or visiting the laboratory, and, for recreation’s sake, watching the processes by which weeds were converted into drugs of potency.

One day, leaning his forehead on his hand, and his elbow on the sill of the open window, that looked towards the grave-yard, he talked with Roger Chillingworth, while the old man was examining a bundle of unsightly plants.

“Where,” asked he, with a look askance at them—­for it was the clergyman’s peculiarity that he seldom, now-a-days, looked straight forth at any object, whether human or inanimate, “where, my kind doctor, did you gather those herbs, with such a dark, flabby leaf?”

“Even in the graveyard here at hand,” answered the physician, continuing his employment.  “They are new to me.  I found them growing on a grave, which bore no tombstone, no other memorial of the dead man, save these ugly weeds, that have taken upon themselves to keep him in remembrance.  They grew out of his heart, and typify, it may be, some hideous secret that was buried with him, and which he had done better to confess during his lifetime.”

“Perchance,” said Mr. Dimmesdale, “he earnestly desired it, but could not.”

“And wherefore?” rejoined the physician.

“Wherefore not; since all the powers of nature call so earnestly for the confession of sin, that these black weeds have sprung up out of a buried heart, to make manifest, an outspoken crime?”

“That, good sir, is but a phantasy of yours,” replied the minister.  “There can be, if I forbode aright, no power, short of the Divine mercy, to disclose, whether by uttered words, or by type or emblem, the secrets that may be buried in the human heart.  The heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them, until the day when all hidden things shall be revealed.  Nor have I so read or interpreted Holy Writ, as to understand that the disclosure of human thoughts and deeds, then to be made, is intended as a part of the retribution.  That, surely, were a shallow view of it.  No; these revelations, unless I greatly err, are meant merely to promote the intellectual satisfaction of all intelligent beings, who will stand waiting, on that day, to see the dark problem of this life made plain.  A knowledge of men’s hearts will be needful to the completest solution of that problem.  And, I conceive moreover, that the hearts holding such miserable secrets as you speak of, will yield them up, at that last day, not with reluctance, but with a joy unutterable.”

“Then why not reveal it here?” asked Roger Chillingworth, glancing quietly aside at the minister.  “Why should not the guilty ones sooner avail themselves of this unutterable solace?”