"There is truth in what she says," began the minister. "God gave her the
child, and there is a quality of awful sacredness between this mother
and this child. It is good for this poor, sinful woman that she hath an
infant confided to her care--to be trained up by her to righteousness,
to remind her and to teach her that, if she bring the child to heaven,
the child also will bring its parent thither. Let us then leave them as
Providence hath seen fit to place them!"

"You speak, my friend, with a strange earnestness," said old Roger
Chillingworth, smiling at him.

"He hath adduced such arguments that we will even leave the matter as it
now stands," said the governor. "So long, at least, as there shall be no
further scandal in the woman."

The affair being so satisfactorily concluded, Hester Prynne, with Pearl,
departed.


_III.--The Leach and his Patient_


It was at the solemn request of the deacons and elders of the church in
Boston that the Rev. Mr. Dimmesdale went to Roger Chillingworth for
professional advice. The young minister's health was failing, his cheek
was paler and thinner, and his voice more tremulous with every
successive Sabbath.

Roger Chillingworth scrutinised his patient carefully, and, accepted as
the medical adviser, determined to know the man before attempting to do