With the same hard demeanour, she
was led back to prison, and vanished from the public gaze within
its iron-clamped portal. It was whispered by those who peered
after her that the scarlet letter threw a lurid gleam along the
dark passage-way of the interior.
IV. THE INTERVIEW
After her return to the prison, Hester Prynne was found to be in
a state of nervous excitement, that demanded constant
watchfulness, lest she should perpetrate violence on herself, or
do some half-frenzied mischief to the poor babe. As night
approached, it proving impossible to quell her insubordination
by rebuke or threats of punishment, Master Brackett, the jailer,
thought fit to introduce a physician. He described him as a man
of skill in all Christian modes of physical science, and
likewise familiar with whatever the savage people could teach in
respect to medicinal herbs and roots that grew in the forest. To
say the truth, there was much need of professional assistance,
not merely for Hester herself, but still more urgently for the
child--who, drawing its sustenance from the maternal bosom,
seemed to have drank in with it all the turmoil, the anguish and
despair, which pervaded the mother's system.
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