And the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale's best discerning friends, as
we have intimated, very reasonably imagined that the hand of
Providence had done all this for the purpose--besought in so
many public and domestic and secret prayers--of restoring the
young minister to health. But, it must now be said, another
portion of the community had latterly begun to take its own view
of the relation betwixt Mr. Dimmesdale and the mysterious old
physician. When an uninstructed multitude attempts to see with
its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived. When, however,
it forms its judgment, as it usually does, on the intuitions of
its great and warm heart, the conclusions thus attained are
often so profound and so unerring as to possess the character of
truth supernaturally revealed. The people, in the case of which
we speak, could justify its prejudice against Roger
Chillingworth by no fact or argument worthy of serious
refutation. There was an aged handicraftsman, it is true, who
had been a citizen of London at the period of Sir Thomas
Overbury's murder, now some thirty years agone; he testified to
having seen the physician, under some other name, which the
narrator of the story had now forgotten, in company with Dr.
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