Continually, and in a thousand other ways, did she feel the
innumerable throbs of anguish that had been so cunningly
contrived for her by the undying, the ever-active sentence of
the Puritan tribunal. Clergymen paused in the streets, to
address words of exhortation, that brought a crowd, with its
mingled grin and frown, around the poor, sinful woman. If she
entered a church, trusting to share the Sabbath smile of the
Universal Father, it was often her mishap to find herself the
text of the discourse. She grew to have a dread of children; for
they had imbibed from their parents a vague idea of something
horrible in this dreary woman gliding silently through the town,
with never any companion but one only child. Therefore, first
allowing her to pass, they pursued her at a distance with shrill
cries, and the utterances of a word that had no distinct purport
to their own minds, but was none the less terrible to her, as
proceeding from lips that babbled it unconsciously. It seemed to
argue so wide a diffusion of her shame, that all nature knew of
it; it could have caused her no deeper pang had the leaves of
the trees whispered the dark story among themselves--had the
summer breeze murmured about it--had the wintry blast shrieked
it aloud! Another peculiar torture was felt in the gaze of a new
eye.
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