When thus perplexed--and cogitating, among other hypotheses,
whether the letter might not have been one of those decorations
which the white men used to contrive in order to take the eyes
of Indians--I happened to place it on my breast. It seemed to
me--the reader may smile, but must not doubt my word--it seemed
to me, then, that I experienced a sensation not altogether
physical, yet almost so, as of burning heat, and as if the
letter were not of red cloth, but red-hot iron. I shuddered,
and involuntarily let it fall upon the floor.

In the absorbing contemplation of the scarlet letter, I had
hitherto neglected to examine a small roll of dingy paper,
around which it had been twisted. This I now opened, and had the
satisfaction to find recorded by the old Surveyor's pen, a
reasonably complete explanation of the whole affair. There were
several foolscap sheets, containing many particulars respecting
the life and conversation of one Hester Prynne, who appeared to
have been rather a noteworthy personage in the view of our
ancestors. She had flourished during the period between the
early days of Massachusetts and the close of the seventeenth
century. Aged persons, alive in the time of Mr. Surveyor Pue,
and from whose oral testimony he had made up his narrative,
remembered her, in their youth, as a very old, but not decrepit
woman, of a stately and solemn aspect. It had been her habit,
from an almost immemorial date, to go about the country as a
kind of voluntary nurse, and doing whatever miscellaneous good
she might; taking upon herself, likewise, to give advice in all
matters, especially those of the heart, by which means--as a
person of such propensities inevitably must--she gained from