Shortly afterwards, the like grisly sense of the humorous again stole in among the solemn phantoms of his thought.  He felt his limbs growing stiff with the unaccustomed chilliness of the night, and doubted whether he should be able to descend the steps of the scaffold.  Morning would break and find him there.  The neighbourhood would begin to rouse itself.  The earliest riser, coming forth in the dim twilight, would perceive a vaguely-defined figure aloft on the place of shame; and half-crazed betwixt alarm and curiosity, would go knocking from door to door, summoning all the people to behold the ghost—­as he needs must think it—­of some defunct transgressor.  A dusky tumult would flap its wings from one house to another.  Then—­the morning light still waxing stronger—­old patriarchs would rise up in great haste, each in his flannel gown, and matronly dames, without pausing to put off their night-gear.  The whole tribe of decorous personages, who had never heretofore been seen with a single hair of their heads awry, would start into public view with the disorder of a nightmare in their aspects.  Old Governor Bellingham would come grimly forth, with his King James’ ruff fastened askew, and Mistress Hibbins, with some twigs of the forest clinging to her skirts, and looking sourer than ever, as having hardly got a wink of sleep after her night ride; and good Father Wilson too, after spending half the night at a death-bed, and liking ill to be disturbed, thus early, out of his dreams about the glorified saints.  Hither, likewise, would come the elders and deacons of Mr. Dimmesdale’s church, and the young virgins who so idolized their minister, and had made a shrine for him in their white bosoms, which now, by-the-bye, in their hurry and confusion, they would scantly have given themselves time to cover with their kerchiefs.  All people, in a word, would come stumbling over their thresholds, and turning up their amazed and horror-stricken visages around the scaffold.  Whom would they discern there, with the red eastern light upon his brow?  Whom, but the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, half-frozen to death, overwhelmed with shame, and standing where Hester Prynne had stood!

Carried away by the grotesque horror of this picture, the minister, unawares, and to his own infinite alarm, burst into a great peal of laughter.  It was immediately responded to by a light, airy, childish laugh, in which, with a thrill of the heart—­but he knew not whether of exquisite pain, or pleasure as acute—­he recognised the tones of little Pearl.

“Pearl!  Little Pearl!” cried he, after a moment’s pause; then, suppressing his voice—­“Hester!  Hester Prynne!  Are you there?”

“Yes; it is Hester Prynne!” she replied, in a tone of surprise; and the minister heard her footsteps approaching from the side-walk, along which she had been passing.  “It is I, and my little Pearl.”

“Whence come you, Hester?” asked the minister.  “What sent you hither?”