And now this fateful interview had come to a close. The dell
was to be left in solitude among its dark, old trees, which,
with their multitudinous tongues, would whisper long of what had
passed there, and no mortal be the wiser. And the melancholy
brook would add this other tale to the mystery with which its
little heart was already overburdened, and whereof it still kept
up a murmuring babble, with not a whit more cheerfulness of tone
than for ages heretofore.
XX. THE MINISTER IN A MAZE
As the minister departed, in advance of Hester Prynne and little
Pearl, he threw a backward glance, half expecting that he should
discover only some faintly traced features or outline of the
mother and the child, slowly fading into the twilight of the
woods. So great a vicissitude in his life could not at once be
received as real. But there was Hester, clad in her gray robe,
still standing beside the tree-trunk, which some blast had
overthrown a long antiquity ago, and which time had ever since
been covering with moss, so that these two fated ones, with
earth's heaviest burden on them, might there sit down together,
and find a single hour's rest and solace.
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