This vessel had recently arrived
from the Spanish Main, and within three days' time would sail
for Bristol. Hester Prynne--whose vocation, as a self-enlisted
Sister of Charity, had brought her acquainted with the captain
and crew--could take upon herself to secure the passage of two
individuals and a child with all the secrecy which circumstances
rendered more than desirable.
The minister had inquired of Hester, with no little interest,
the precise time at which the vessel might be expected to
depart. It would probably be on the fourth day from the present.
"This is most fortunate!" he had then said to himself. Now, why
the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale considered it so very fortunate we
hesitate to reveal. Nevertheless--to hold nothing back from the
reader--it was because, on the third day from the present, he
was to preach the Election Sermon; and, as such an occasion
formed an honourable epoch in the life of a New England
Clergyman, he could not have chanced upon a more suitable mode
and time of terminating his professional career. "At least, they
shall say of me," thought this exemplary man, "that I leave no
public duty unperformed or ill-performed!" Sad, indeed, that an
introspection so profound and acute as this poor minister's
should be so miserably deceived! We have had, and may still
have, worse things to tell of him; but none, we apprehend, so
pitiably weak; no evidence, at once so slight and irrefragable,
of a subtle disease that had long since begun to eat into the
real substance of his character.
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