It had been built by an earlier settler, and abandoned,
because the soil about it was too sterile for cultivation, while
its comparative remoteness put it out of the sphere of that
social activity which already marked the habits of the
emigrants. It stood on the shore, looking across a basin of the
sea at the forest-covered hills, towards the west. A clump of
scrubby trees, such as alone grew on the peninsula, did not so
much conceal the cottage from view, as seem to denote that here
was some object which would fain have been, or at least ought to
be, concealed. In this little lonesome dwelling, with some
slender means that she possessed, and by the licence of the
magistrates, who still kept an inquisitorial watch over her,
Hester established herself, with her infant child. A mystic
shadow of suspicion immediately attached itself to the spot.
Children, too young to comprehend wherefore this woman should be
shut out from the sphere of human charities, would creep nigh
enough to behold her plying her needle at the cottage-window, or
standing in the doorway, or labouring in her little garden, or
coming forth along the pathway that led townward, and,
discerning the scarlet letter on her breast, would scamper off
with a strange contagious fear.
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