small forefinger, and touched the scarlet
letter.
    »He did not send me!« cried she, positively. »I have no Heavenly Father!«
    »Hush, Pearl, hush! Thou must not talk so!« answered the mother, suppressing
a groan. »He sent us all into this world. He sent even me, thy mother. Then,
much more, thee! Or, if not, thou strange and elfish child, whence didst thou
come?«
    »Tell me! Tell me!« repeated Pearl, no longer seriously, but laughing, and
capering about the floor. »It is thou that must tell me!«
    But Hester could not resolve the query, being herself in a dismal labyrinth
of doubt. She remembered - betwixt a smile and a shudder - the talk of the
neighbouring townspeople; who, seeking vainly elsewhere for the child's
paternity, and observing some of her odd attributes, had given out that poor
little Pearl was a demon offspring; such as, ever since old Catholic times, had
occasionally been seen on earth, through the agency of their mothers' sin, and
to promote some foul and wicked purpose. Luther, according to the scandal of his
monkish enemies, was a brat of that hellish breed; nor was Pearl the only child
to whom this inauspicious origin was assigned, among the New England Puritans.
 

                            VII. The Governor's Hall

Hester Prynne went, one day, to the mansion of Governor Bellingham, with a pair
of gloves, which she had fringed and embroidered to his order, and which were to
be worn on some great occasion of state; for, though the chances of a popular
election had caused this former ruler to descend a step or two from the highest
rank, he still held an honorable and influential place among the colonial
magistracy.
    Another and far more important reason than the delivery of a pair of
embroidered gloves impelled Hester, at this time, to seek an interview with a
personage of so much power and activity in the affairs of the settlement. It had
reached her ears, that there was a design on the part of some of the leading
inhabitants, cherishing the more rigid order of principles in religion and
government, to deprive her of her child. On the supposition that Pearl, as
already hinted, was of demon origin, these good people not unreasonably argued
that a Christian interest in the mother's soul required them to remove such a
stumbling-block from her path. If the child, on the other hand, were really
capable of moral and religious growth, and possessed