the sin-born infant in her arms; with a whole people, drawn
forth as to a festival, staring at the features that should have been seen only
in the quiet gleam of the fireside, in the happy shadow of a home, or beneath a
matronly veil, at church. Dreadful as it was, she was conscious of a shelter in
the presence of these thousand witnesses. It was better to stand thus, with so
many betwixt him and her, than to greet him, face to face, they two alone. She
fled for refuge, as it were, to the public exposure, and dreaded the moment when
its protection should be withdrawn from her. Involved in these thoughts, she
scarcely heard a voice behind her, until it had repeated her name more than
once, in a loud and solemn tone, audible to the whole multitude.
    »Hearken unto me, Hester Prynne!« said the voice.
    It has already been noticed, that directly over the platform on which Hester
Prynne stood was a kind of balcony, or open gallery, appended to the
meeting-house. It was the place whence proclamations were wont to be made,
amidst an assemblage of the magistracy, with all the ceremonial that attended
such public observances in those days. Here, to witness the scene which we are
describing, sat Governor Bellingham himself, with four sergeants about his
chair, bearing halberds, as a guard of honor. He wore a dark feather in his hat,
a border of embroidery on his cloak, and a black velvet tunic beneath; a
gentleman advanced in years, and with a hard experience written in his wrinkles.
He was not ill fitted to be the head and representative of a community, which
owed its origin and progress, and its present state of development, not to the
impulses of youth, but to the stern and tempered energies of manhood, and the
sombre sagacity of age; accomplishing so much, precisely because it imagined and
hoped so little. The other eminent characters, by whom the chief ruler was
surrounded, were distinguished by a dignity of mien, belonging to a period when
the forms of authority were felt to possess the sacredness of divine
institutions. They were, doubtless, good men, just, and sage. But, out of the
whole human family, it would not have been easy to select the same number of
wise and virtuous persons, who should be less capable of sitting in judgment on
an erring woman's heart, and disentangling its mesh of good and evil, than the
sages of rigid aspect towards whom Hester Prynne now turned her