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Pearl
laughed
again
.
But
before
Mr.
Dimmesdale
had
done
speaking
,
a
light
gleamed
far
and
wide
over
all
the
muffled
sky
.
It
was
doubtless
caused
by
one
of
those
meteors
,
which
the
night-watcher
may
so
often
observe
burning
out
to
waste
,
in
the
vacant
regions
of
the
atmosphere
.
So
powerful
was
its
radiance
,
that
it
thoroughly
illuminated
the
dense
medium
of
cloud
betwixt
the
sky
and
earth
.
The
great
vault
brightened
,
like
the
dome
of
an
immense
lamp
.
It
showed
the
familiar
scene
of
the
street
with
the
distinctness
of
mid-day
,
but
also
with
the
awfulness
that
is
always
imparted
to
familiar
objects
by
an
unaccustomed
light
The
wooden
houses
,
with
their
jutting
storeys
and
quaint
gable-peaks
;
the
doorsteps
and
thresholds
with
the
early
grass
springing
up
about
them
;
the
garden-plots
,
black
with
freshly-turned
earth
;
the
wheel-track
,
little
worn
,
and
even
in
the
market-place
margined
with
green
on
either
side
--
all
were
visible
,
but
with
a
singularity
of
aspect
that
seemed
to
give
another
moral
interpretation
to
the
things
of
this
world
than
they
had
ever
borne
before
.
And
there
stood
the
minister
,
with
his
hand
over
his
heart
;
and
Hester
Prynne
,
with
the
embroidered
letter
glimmering
on
her
bosom
;
and
little
Pearl
,
herself
a
symbol
,
and
the
connecting
link
between
those
two
.
They
stood
in
the
noon
of
that
strange
and
solemn
splendour
,
as
if
it
were
the
light
that
is
to
reveal
all
secrets
,
and
the
daybreak
that
shall
unite
all
who
belong
to
one
another
.
There
was
witchcraft
in
little
Pearl
's
eyes
;
and
her
face
,
as
she
glanced
upward
at
the
minister
,
wore
that
naughty
smile
which
made
its
expression
frequently
so
elvish
.
She
withdrew
her
hand
from
Mr.
Dimmesdale
's
,
and
pointed
across
the
street
.
But
he
clasped
both
his
hands
over
his
breast
,
and
cast
his
eyes
towards
the
zenith
.
Nothing
was
more
common
,
in
those
days
,
than
to
interpret
all
meteoric
appearances
,
and
other
natural
phenomena
that
occured
with
less
regularity
than
the
rise
and
set
of
sun
and
moon
,
as
so
many
revelations
from
a
supernatural
source
.
Thus
,
a
blazing
spear
,
a
sword
of
flame
,
a
bow
,
or
a
sheaf
of
arrows
seen
in
the
midnight
sky
,
prefigured
Indian
warfare
.
Pestilence
was
known
to
have
been
foreboded
by
a
shower
of
crimson
light
.
We
doubt
whether
any
marked
event
,
for
good
or
evil
,
ever
befell
New
England
,
from
its
settlement
down
to
revolutionary
times
,
of
which
the
inhabitants
had
not
been
previously
warned
by
some
spectacle
of
its
nature
.
Not
seldom
,
it
had
been
seen
by
multitudes
.
Oftener
,
however
,
its
credibility
rested
on
the
faith
of
some
lonely
eye-witness
,
who
beheld
the
wonder
through
the
coloured
,
magnifying
,
and
distorted
medium
of
his
imagination
,
and
shaped
it
more
distinctly
in
his
after-thought
.
It
was
,
indeed
,
a
majestic
idea
that
the
destiny
of
nations
should
be
revealed
,
in
these
awful
hieroglyphics
,
on
the
cope
of
heaven
.
A
scroll
so
wide
might
not
be
deemed
too
expensive
for
Providence
to
write
a
people
's
doom
upon
.
The
belief
was
a
favourite
one
with
our
forefathers
,
as
betokening
that
their
infant
commonwealth
was
under
a
celestial
guardianship
of
peculiar
intimacy
and
strictness
.
But
what
shall
we
say
,
when
an
individual
discovers
a
revelation
addressed
to
himself
alone
,
on
the
same
vast
sheet
of
record
.
In
such
a
case
,
it
could
only
be
the
symptom
of
a
highly
disordered
mental
state
,
when
a
man
,
rendered
morbidly
self-contemplative
by
long
,
intense
,
and
secret
pain
,
had
extended
his
egotism
over
the
whole
expanse
of
nature
,
until
the
firmament
itself
should
appear
no
more
than
a
fitting
page
for
his
soul
's
history
and
fate
.
We
impute
it
,
therefore
,
solely
to
the
disease
in
his
own
eye
and
heart
that
the
minister
,
looking
upward
to
the
zenith
,
beheld
there
the
appearance
of
an
immense
letter
--
the
letter
A
--
marked
out
in
lines
of
dull
red
light
.
Not
but
the
meteor
may
have
shown
itself
at
that
point
,
burning
duskily
through
a
veil
of
cloud
,
but
with
no
such
shape
as
his
guilty
imagination
gave
it
,
or
,
at
least
,
with
so
little
definiteness
,
that
another
's
guilt
might
have
seen
another
symbol
in
it
.
There
was
a
singular
circumstance
that
characterised
Mr.
Dimmesdale
's
psychological
state
at
this
moment
.
All
the
time
that
he
gazed
upward
to
the
zenith
,
he
was
,
nevertheless
,
perfectly
aware
that
little
Pearl
was
hinting
her
finger
towards
old
Roger
Chillingworth
,
who
stood
at
no
great
distance
from
the
scaffold
.
The
minister
appeared
to
see
him
,
with
the
same
glance
that
discerned
the
miraculous
letter
.
To
his
feature
as
to
all
other
objects
,
the
meteoric
light
imparted
a
new
expression
;
or
it
might
well
be
that
the
physician
was
not
careful
then
,
as
at
all
other
times
,
to
hide
the
malevolence
with
which
he
looked
upon
his
victim
.
Certainly
,
if
the
meteor
kindled
up
the
sky
,
and
disclosed
the
earth
,
with
an
awfulness
that
admonished
Hester
Prynne
and
the
clergyman
of
the
day
of
judgment
,
then
might
Roger
Chillingworth
have
passed
with
them
for
the
arch-fiend
,
standing
there
with
a
smile
and
scowl
,
to
claim
his
own
.
So
vivid
was
the
expression
,
or
so
intense
the
minister
's
perception
of
it
,
that
it
seemed
still
to
remain
painted
on
the
darkness
after
the
meteor
had
vanished
,
with
an
effect
as
if
the
street
and
all
things
else
were
at
once
annihilated
.
"
Who
is
that
man
,
Hester
?
"
gasped
Mr.
Dimmesdale
,
overcome
with
terror
.
"
I
shiver
at
him
!
Dost
thou
know
the
man
?
I
hate
him
,
Hester
!
"
She
remembered
her
oath
,
and
was
silent
.
